


Immortal-verse

by beetle



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:50:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm really bad at summaries, but hey! There's smoochies and banter. Do you really care, beyond that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life is Good . . . Cue the Ominous Music

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not mine at all, woe is me. Console me with concrit/feedback.  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: None, actually. How weird is that?

"Good Lord, you're not wearing  _that_ , are you? It's nightmarish!"  
  
  
A look of wounded offense plastered on his face, Xander pauses mid model-spin and brushes purely imaginary lint off his lucky shirt.  
  
  
Three years ago, this same shirt had literally appeared on his sleeping bag with a brief note tucked into the pocket.  
  
  
 _Happpy New Year!_  the eye-watering pink cocktail napkin had proclaimed in a shaky version of Willow's normally precise cursive.   
  
  
(It had also proclaimed:  **Girl Groove! Where Girls _Groove_!**  but in a much steadier purple typeface.)  
  
  
Xander had puzzled over napkin and shirt for a few moments--it wasn't New Years, not even close--before stashing the note with his passport. The shirt--which no less than seven kaleidoscopes must've thrown up on--he kept in his backpack, never managing to ship it to Giles for safe keeping until his reassignment.  
  
  
Eventually he'd started wearing it, and it'd become sort of a luck talisman; almost as inseparable from him as the tattoos on his skin and the string of fetishes around his neck.  
  
  
"I'll have you know,” Xander begins, as stately and dignified as the Titanic, “that this shirt is a classic."  
  
  
Adam gives him one of those looks--that includes a very raised, very British eyebrow. It reminds him nostalgically of Giles--and even of Spike in an oh-thank-God-I-don't-have-to-share-living-space-with-that-primadonna-anymore sort of way.  
  
  
"I'm almost certain that you and I have different meanings for the word 'classic', in that case," Adam murmurs, standing up and strolling around the couch, eying him intently. When he's close enough to haul Xander in by the lapels of the admittedly loud shirt, he frowns critically at it, then aims a wry smile at Xander. "You know, it's amazing. . . ."  
  
  
"What?" Xander demands, prepared to defend tipsy!Willow's taste in shirts to the death. But Adam's hazel eyes are sparkling with laughter, and something else that makes Xander's heart skip random beats.  
  
  
"Even this hideously-patterned monstrosity looks good on you."  
  
  
Mollified, Xander blushes and preens. "All part of the Xander Harris entirely figurative mojo." And possibly the Willow Rosenberg quite literal mojo, but there's really no need to get into that. Not until he absolutely has to.  
  
  
Say . . . when he's in his nineties and via Ouija board. . . .  
  
  
"Not that you wouldn't look much better out of it." Adam's long fingers are already unbuttoning the shirt as he crowds Xander towards the counter that separates the living room from the kitchen. He has the shirt halfway unbuttoned when Xander jumps away wearing his resolve-face.   
  
  
Adam pulls a look of his own: that of chastised puppy. Of both looks, Adam's is easily the stronger. But Xander's hip to this game. He's not falling for it.   
  
  
He's also having a lot of trouble rebuttoning the goddamn shirt.  
  
  
Adam sidles closer, wearing that Cheshire cat grin Xander used to hate--and still finds exasperating in moments like these. "You, my darling, must learn how to take a compliment."   
  
  
"Oh, I can take plenty of compliments. Except when they're a ruse to distract me from meeting the boyfriend's friends."  
  
  
"Yes, because that's the only reason 'the boyfriend' wants to see you out of that shirt. Not to mention the rest of your clothes." In a low, amused voice that makes Xander body think it's sixteen again for a number of reasons. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay home, drink some imported beer and pretend it's our first date all over again?"  
  
  
"Sir, are you implying that I'm easy?"  
  
  
That British-guy eyebrow and an ironic twist to lips that, depsite himself, Xander wants to kiss. "Implying?"  
  
  
Xander crosses his arms in a way he hopes says  _absolutely no nookie for you_. Not that that's ever stopped Adam from using every weapon in his distressingly large arsenal of naughtiness.   
  
  
And speaking of Adam not stopping--Xander smacks a sneaky, far too clever hand away from his belt. As always, there's an almost visible spark between them at the skin-to- skin contact. It's a more tangible version of the visceral reaction/Adam-sense Xander's had since day one. Even with his eyes closed and fresh out of a dead sleep he can always tell where in the apartment Adam is--or if he's in it at all. He can feel it in his bones and in his blood; in the flutter in the pit of his stomach and the buzz in the back of his brain.  
  
  
Suffice it to say the man's never been able to sneak up on him.  
  
  
“Hey!” Xander smacks at Adam's hand again--hands, because the one not tugging Xander close again by the same belt loop is sliding into Xander's back pocket. "Hands-- _hands_ , Mister!"  
  
  
But it's not just hands, now, it's lips, and heated kisses and heated words whispered almost reverently against Xander's lips. There's more groin-to-groin contact now than skin-to-skin, and that, of course, brings its own special tingle and buzz.  
  
  
Somehow, Xander's still surprised when, a few minutes later, he's holding up the living room wall--trying to catch his breath while Adam is slithering gracefully down his body. Taking Xander's jeans with him.  
  
  
“. . . think we should just stay home tonight. You can meet them some other time.” Adam murmurs on his stomach, warm and tickley.  
  
  
“Oh, no you don't!” Xander grabs his jeans and yanks them back up, stumbling away till he hits the back of the couch and slides down onto it. He bounces to his feet quickly, managing to bash only one ankle on the coffee table. “It's almost five-thirty, Adam. We're supposed to get there for seven. Seacouver's ninety minutes away by car. So. We're going into the bedroom--”  
  
  
“Naturally,” Adam says, grinning and still crouched exactly where Xander had left him. His head is cocked at that angle, the one that means he is, right now, finding Xander endlessly interesting and surprising.   
  
  
Like many things about Adam, this is both endearing and annoying in nearly equal measures.  
  
  
“Going to the bedroom  _to get changed_. In fact--I'm going in there alone and when I'm done, you--eep!”  
  
  
Still as a pond one moment, vaulting over the back of the couch to land next to Xander the next, Adam has him before he can do more than  _eep_  and half-turn toward their bedroom.  
  
  
Xander struggles reluctantly against the hugging and nuzzling. "C'mon, babe, we  _so_  don't have time for this, so qui--okay, this isn't funny, put me down! I mean it, Adam! Put me-- _ow_!"  
  
  
(This is another endearing/annoying thing about Adam. Not the fact that he's currently got Xander slung over his shoulder like a duffel bag full of laundry. That's actually kind of hot. No, the endearing/annoying bit is that Adam--who tends to  _look_  spindly and delicate in his customary black and grey, but is actually all coiled, wiry strength--is so able to easily and completely overpower him. Not in a threatening way, granted. But it's a bit of a blow to the ego of a burly, muscle-y, damn manly carpentry man, who just happens to do carpentry and tote around ginormous slabs of wood all day, to have his physically smaller boyfriend carry him around.  
  
  
Sometimes it's also enough to make him wonder if his boyfriend is entirely human.)  
  
  
"Oh, stop moaning and flailing." Adam smacks Xander's ass again, but a bit more gently. And without breaking his stride toward their bedroom. “We've got plenty of time.”  
  
  
“Only if you're not looking at a clock,” Xander huffs. "Haven't you heard 'no' means no?"  
  
  
"Except when it means yes." The world spins and stops with a bounce when Adam dumps Xander on the bed.   
  
  
“I told you I hate it when you do this, right?" he groans, throwing an arm over his face to block out the spinning room and the three boyfriends grinning down at him.  
  
  
"You have--" Adam's tugging Xander's jeans back down. There's a truncated jingle as they hit the dresser belt buckle first "--but I just don't believe you."  
  
  
"Adam. . . .” the sigh of the long-suffering Xander, as Adam pushes his legs apart and kneels between them. He efficiently unbuttons the lucky shirt and pushes it as far down Xander's shoulders as he can with Xander refusing to budge.   
  
  
“You could lend a hand, you know.” This suggestion is kissed dead center onto Xander's sternum. He inhales sharply, but doesn't move either arm.  
  
  
“Yeah. Cuz I'm gonna  _help you_  make us late- _er_.”  
  
  
"Joe and Mac are surprised to see me at all--let alone on time.” Adam folds his arms and makes himself comfortable on Xander's chest. “In any case, when I say seven, they know not before nine, maybe ten. Joe'll jam with whatever unsung blues hero is playing tonight and Mac'll unwittingly steal the hearts of several pretty young things. Thus our absence will go unnoticed for quite some time."  
  
  
"But when we do show up, they're gonna notice that we're covered in hickies and I'm walking funny."  
  
  
For a few seconds Adam's shaking with silent, full-body laughter and Xander uncovers his eye just to glare. Adam only laughs harder, using the moment of relaxed vigilance to slip Xander's left arm out of it's sleeve. The right arm is a bit of a struggle.  
  
  
"Well, we'll wear turtlenecks and I'll push you along in a wheelchair, how's that for subterfuge?"  
  
  
Xander rolls his eyes, but helps Adam tug the shirt free. It goes sailing off in the direction of his pants. "What's really scary is that  _I'm_  the adult in this relationship."  
  
  
"Mm, a truly frightening thought, now that you mention it." Adam's grin slips into a warm smile. The one Xander can't help but return, even though he's wound up and nervous and still a bit pissed off at the purposely crap timing of this seduction.  
  
  
When Adam leans up to kiss him, though, Xander doesn't turn away--doesn't hold back a moan at the unexpected sweetness of it.  
  
  
"Pretty, pretty please," Adam murmurs in a voice that's pure, shameless sex and really, who does Xander think he's kidding?  
  
  
No one in this apartment, that's for sure. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with being love's bitch as long as you keep up the gameface.   
  
  
Sound advice despite it's origins.  
  
  
“Alright. But make it quick,” Xander says between kisses, all fake reluctance and magnanimity.  
  
  
“Hmm . . . and when have you ever known me to be quick?”  
  
  
Xander's eyebrows shoot up. “Does the night we met ring  _any_  bells?”  
  
  
Adam actually blushes, the first time in nearly a year of their strange permutation of fucking/friendship/dating/serial monogamy. “I was pissed, if you'll recall. And when I embarked on my delightful evening of alcohol poisoning, I didn't really expect I'd be called upon to tumble anyone that night.”  
  
  
“Excuses, excuses.” Xander tries to wrap his arms around Adam's neck, but Adam catches his wrists and kisses them before bearing them down to the bed in a gentle hold.  
  
  
“Once you stopped avoiding me, I redeemed myself, though. Over and over and--” Xander's breathing stutters then speeds up when Adam's hands on his wrists clamp down enough to be restraining and he swoops in for another kiss that's more teeth than tenderness “--over.”  
  
  
“Fuck, we're--gonna be sooo late for--for the--the thing we had to go to at--the place--"  
  
  
“Run away with me,” Adam stops kissing him just long enough to say. Then he's pulling Xander's arms around his neck and rolling them to their sides, tangling their legs together.  
  
  
“Huh? What?” Active listening is really tricky, what with his attention evenly divided between kissing and trying to pull off a shapeless, threadbare sweater of the type that seems to be a staple of Adam's wardrobe.   
  
  
“Have you ever been to Rangoon?”  
  
  
“Like Crab Rangoon?” Which reminds Xander he's been too nervous to eat all day. And his hands keep getting sidetracked by all the warm skin and sleek muscle underneath the sweater.  
  
  
“What about Bora Bora?” Adam shrugs out of the sweater in one fluid movement, then sits up--despite Xander's pout--to unzip his jeans and shove them down.  
  
  
He grins at the appreciative glazing of Xander's eye.  
  
  
“Samoa,” he purrs, and Xander really hasn't been listening, because  _huh_?  
  
  
“Samoa? Weren't we talking about Chinese take-out?” he begins, but Adam's sprawling on top of him again for intensive groinal grinding. The proper word, Xander now knows, is  _frottage_. Which is definitely  _not_  also the French word for cheese.  
  
  
"Anywhere in the Society Islands is simply gorgeous, if you like the tropics.”  
  
  
"And I do, mosquitoes notwithstanding,” Xander confirms, even though Adam lost him somewhere between Crab Rangoon and frottage. “Sweetheart, is this onset Alzheimer's? Cuz . . . you're only thirty-nine."  
  
  
“Tahiti!” Adam declares his eyes lighting up in that impassioned way that means he's not being facetious with these questions. “We could disappear in the most beautiful place on earth. Gauguin was a bloody genius, but even he didn't do the place justice--you'll go crazy when you see it. We'll live out the rest of our lives in style and anonymity.”  
  
  
"Tahiti? Fuck, never mind. Tell me later, Professor.” Adam's pulled Xander's right leg around his waist and is attacking his left ear again with sharp, playful teeth. Such changes and mixes of mood are, to Xander, classic Adam Pierson: the man who can wax pedantic about the Whig Party circa 1830, whilst binding his desperately horny boyfriend wrist and ankle to the bed.  
  
  
Adam doesn't just live fully in a moment, he lives fully in many of them, all at the same time, and that will always fascinate Xander.   
  
  
Though it is, on occasion, exasperating.  
  
  
“You know, keeping up with you will kill me well before  _I'm_  thirty-nine," he murmurs, using his leg to pull Adam closer, and just--right--there, and yeah, sooner or later one of them are going to have to pull it together for long enough to grab the lube out of the night table.  
  
  
But Xander must've somehow put his foot in it because all naughtiness has stopped and Adam is rolling onto his back, covering his face with a sigh.  
  
  
"No worries on that count. You're going to live a very, very long life, Xander Harris," he says, sounding less than resoundingly joyful about it.  
  
  
A less mature Xander might feel like his heart's been ripped out and watusied on. A Xander who's less than certain that he somehow  _knows_  Adam on a level that runs even deeper than instinct might curl up and die.  
  
  
But  _this_  Xander turns over, spooning Adam's unusually rigid body. After watching his pale profile and squinched-shut eyes, he nuzzles Adam's shoulder and soothes his hand up and down his chest.  
  
  
“I'm gonna live a long life, huh? I take it that means you're no longer planning to poison me so you can inherit all my millions?”  
  
  
Adam snorts, almost smiling, and looks over at Xander. His eyes, always so much older than the rest of him, seem weary and unhappy, as well.  
  
  
This is nothing Xander hasn't seen before, but he's been seeing it more and more, lately. Something too intense and rooted in the present to be brooding.  
  
  
“Listen, my Adam-sense has been tingling for awhile, now. There's something you're not telling me. And I get that--whatever it is, you'll tell me in your own time because . . . whatever it is, isn't the easiest thing to say.” Xander forges ahead before Adam can protest. They don't lie to each other, as far as Xander knows, and he'd rather they didn't start. “But-- _whatever it is_ , it's not gonna change the way I feel about you, if that's what you're worried about.”  
  
  
This time, Adam actually rolls away from him and sits up, swinging his feet to the floor. "There are . . . . certain things you don't know about me, Xander--about us. Things that . . . well. There may come a time when you regret you ever met me." Adam's tone suggests that time may not be too far into the future.  
  
  
"Never gonna happen.” He means it, would never say it if he didn't. But he also knows he'd say _anything_  and mean it just to have back the banter and lust of--God, was it only a minute or two ago? Had he only been worried about meeting Adam's friends just a few minutes before that?  
  
  
He lays his hand on Adam's back, pathetically grateful when he doesn't pull away.  
  
  
“I really didn't intend to fall so quickly, or so deeply, you understand,” Adam says, low and soft--not exactly a sweeping declaration of love, but then he isn't that type. “You took me completely by surprise.”  
  
  
For all that he seems like an open book, the only thing Adam Pierson guards more fanatically than his past is his heart. So to Xander, that quiet little statement means nothing short of everything. “I'll take that as a compliment.”  
  
  
“That's how I meant it.” There's a definite smile in Adam's voice.  
  
  
Xander sits up and wraps his arms around Adam's waist, resting his chin one prominent shoulder blade. “Then the feeling is mutual.”  
  
  
Adam leans back in his embrace with another sigh, this one somewhat less discontented. "It really  _is_  important to me that you meet Joe and Mac. You and Joe'll get on like a house on fire and MacLeod . . . well, you and he have a great deal in common."  
  
  
Ah, and there's that nervousness from before. As changes of subject go, it's fairly effective.  
  
  
"Please tell me that 'a great deal' doesn't include you?" Xander's intent  _is_  to lighten the mood some, but from the little he knows about Duncan Macleod, if the guy's carrying a torch for Adam. . . . "I mean, one-eyed carpentry guy versus the Scotsman who teaches martial arts and owns his own barge? Them're Vegas odds, and not in my favor."   
  
  
"Xander," Adam's voice turns gentle in the way that it only does for Xander. Which isn't to say that it hadn't for Duncan MacLeod, at some point, but Xander tries not to dwell on this kind of thought. "MacLeod grew on me--sort of like a barnacle, or a really persistent rash. And I'll admit he can be very . . . charismatic. But I'm not in love with him, and I never have been. You, however, are another story."   
  
  
 _Oh._  "Oh." The muscles in Xander's face feel like they're straining, trying to stretch his smile from ear to ear.   
  
  
“To be honest, I've never met a man as doggedly heterosexual as MacLeod. I doubt he's ever even been curious. Which is suspicious, in and of itself. . . .”  
  
  
While it's all well and good that Adam and his best friend aren't carrying mutual torches for each other, Xander still doesn't like the idea of his boyfriend speculating about the guy's sexual preferences. "Yeah, great, hey--how 'bout those Supersonics!"  
  
  
Adam chuckles. "You're adorable when you're jealous and insecure."  
  
  
"Then I must be adorable all the time."   
  
  
"You are. And no matter what happens, no matter how things go, I want you to know that all I've ever wanted for you is safety and happiness." Adam's voice is suddenly serious, and wearier and guiltier than Spike or Angel had ever sounded.  
  
  
"Babe? Seriously? You're starting to freak me out.” Xander hugs him tighter for a moment, worried and directionless with it. “What the hell do you think is gonna happen tonight?"   
  
  
"I think . . . we're going to have a few drinks and dinner with Joe and Mac, then a nice long chat. Afterwards . . . is entirely up to you."   
  
  
"That isn't some kinda polite euphemism for a  _Xander-in-the-middle_  gang-bang, is it?"  
  
  
" _No_!” Adam leans his head back far enough so he can see Xander. That Cheshire cat look is back, warring with amused horror. “My libertine days are quite far behind me, thank you.”  
  
  
"Alright, then. Stop making me worry.” Xander kisses Adam's short, spiky hair and runs his hands down Adam's chest. “This is just me meeting your friends. Friends that you were in no way romantically involved with, and who will have no reason, whatsoever, to hate me or judo-chop me."   
  
  
"Hate  _you_?” Adam snorts again, but it's wry, rather than rueful. "Xander, you're noble, honest, funny and unbelievably sweet. If anything, they'll love you."  
  
  
"But not as much as  _you_  love me." It slips out before Xander can stop it. Just because Adam's admitted it once doesn't mean he wants to be saying it every five seconds. . . .  
  
  
"Well, that'd be impossible.” Adam turns and pushes Xander back down on the bed. “And considering that you've already taken my heart, it'd be terribly gauche of you to take theirs, as well.”  
  
  
“True.” If hearing this is going to make his heart beat this fast and hard every time, Adam's eventually going to  _hear_  it for himself. “So, there's no chance--and I'm just spit-ballin', here--these friends of yours . . . are, say, vampires?”  
  
  
 _”What?”_  
  
  
“Or, you know, some kinda--less-than-law-abiding guys of the non-human variety?” Adam's watching him with wide eyes, seemingly rendered speechless for once. “And they haven't ever tried to, um . . . destroy the world?”  
  
  
Finally, Adam blinks, lays down and says: “No . . . but I'm suddenly a lot more nervous about meeting  _your_  friends.”  
  
  
Xander laughs a little, tucking his face into the hollow between Adam's neck and shoulder. It's certainly noteworthy that he hadn't said:  _vampires? Demons? Why, Xander, those things aren't_ real?  
  
  
There are probably many talks they need to have down the line, not the least of which are extremely candid recountings of their pasts. But he's suddenly sure that when that time comes, Adam may not be as shocked by Xander's past as previously feared.   
  
  
Though he's not naïve enough to believe the reverse is likely to be true, Xander's also not cynical enough to believe they can't weather whatever lurks in Adam's past together.  
  
  
“I think you should get the lube, since you love me so much and you're closer to the night table,” Xander announces, scraping his nails down Adam's chest just for the purring rumble it causes.  
  
  
“Engaging in carnal activities won't make us any earlier for dinner, Xander,” Adam tsks, but obediently reaches for the drawer. When he turns back to Xander, triumphant, he waggles the tube before flicking the cap up and squirting a pretty spare amount onto Xander's stomach to warm.  
  
  
When Xander raises an questioning eyebrow, Adam mirrors it. “What? I've already covered you in hickies. Just taking care of the rest.”  
  
  
“That'll teach me to be careful what I wish for.”  
  
  
A possessive, promising smile. “Indeed.”  
  
  
Then there's no more conversation for awhile just  _touch_ ; just changes in their breathing and desperate moans, most of which are Xander's.   
  
  
Finally, just a long string of swears from Adam in a language Xander doesn't even recognize, but is flattered by nonetheless. Though he does grow concerned when a few minutes have passed and Adam still hasn't started moving. His face is flushed and deceptively serene, his prominent bone structure softened by the fading twilight.  
  
  
Utterly still, but for the pulse at his temple.  
  
  
“Hey,” Xander ventures, smiling when Adam opens his eyes. “Hi there, handsome. You okay?”  
  
  
Adam rests his head against Xander's left knee briefly, but doesn't return the smile. “Hold on,” he says tightly.  
  
  
Xander's hands have barely closed on the headboard--which has seen its own share of abuse in the past six months--before Adam pulls out almost completely, then surges forward. Xander cries out, is seeing stars; seeing electricity arcing even after he opens his eyes again. Sees it in Adam's eyes, and crawling all over their skin and glowing like a blue nimbus.  
  
  
Random Saint Elmo's Fire when they fuck? Should freak Xander out, but it doesn't. Never has, and never will.  
  
  
When his right leg slips off Adam's shoulder a little while later, he doesn't really notice or care, but for Adam pushing the leg out to the side and keeping it out of the way.   
  
  
They don't break eye contact, even while kissing each other breathless.  
  
  
It's always like this. It  _will_  always be like this, if Xander gets a say.  
  
  
Soon, the headboard is actually starting to creak under his grip and he can feel an intense, slow-building orgasm pooling in the pit of his stomach and coiling at the base of his spine.  
  
  
“Love you, Adam,” he gasps, unaware he's doing so. “Love you so much--”  
  
  
They're going to be  _spectacularly_  late for meeting the boyfriend's friends, but who can worry as far ahead as tonight?  _Now_  is so very good, and the foreseeable future's shaping up to be the same.


	2. Princes of the Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst, major character death, smutty bits. The pilfered title says it all. Written for spring_with_xan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Talk to my lawyers.  
> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen". A prequel to "Life is Good . . . Cue the Ominous Music," can be read as a standalone. Vague spoilers for BtVS, mildly AU for Highlander.

**Seattle, WA. April, 2007**

  
  
Xander pauses in the doorway for a second, letting the eyes that've been on him for hours look their fill before he steps out into the chilly, damp night.  
  
  
Not as chilly and damp as it should be, though. His blood's been running strangely hot for hours, now. His stomach is full of drunken butterflies, and his spine is tingling, galvanized. His mind is a hum of nearly predatory anticipation--so much so, he barely made it till last call, and even then, got the last couple of mixed drinks so muddled he'd finally said  _fuck it_ , and comped them.  
  
  
Then, with a challenging glance down the bar, had strolled to the back exit for his customary end-of-the-night smoke break.  
  
  
He could all but feel the other stand, and slowly follow; those butterflies multiplied by a billion, his entire body a storm of want and giddiness.  
  
  
He's  _so_  gonna get laid tonight. For the first time since his slutty post-Africa days. (Willow teleporting in to give him the resolve face and a magical cure for a very un-magical STD, had been a strangely silent intervention that'd shriveled his libido for the better part of a year.)  
  
  
Not that he's reverting to his old ways, but . . . he's been living like a monk for long enough, and not for lack of offers. It's time to weigh-in in the sexual arena, once more.  
  
  
When the back door snicks quietly shut behind him, Xander steps into the small, dim employee parking lot. Lights his cigarette and ambles toward his car.  
  
  
He's busy trying to see into the window (make sure the back seat isn't too cluttered with crap, just in case) when the door opens again, letting out a gaudy fan of light and noise before it snicks shut once more.  
  
  
"I just came here to drown my sorrows, and be anonymous."  
  
  
A sudden jolt rips through Xander like live current through water, and it's all he can do not to moan. He knows without looking that the low, lightly accented voice can only belong to the kinda hot, kinda drunk guy that's been staring holes into him since midnight. He's only heard that voice in passing, slightly below the general hum of conversation, and only then to say "Tsing Tao", or "scotch, neat", or "thanks".  
  
  
This is the man whose attention has kept Xander almost jittery with sobriety, despite the occasional shots done with regulars. Even now, he can feel the other's gaze on him, crawling across his skin like static electricity, jangling nerves the cigarette had just started to smooth.  
  
  
"Mister--this is a bar. Anonymity's what everyone comes here for. Well, that, and the mega-hot bartender." He takes one last, deep drag, flicks his cigarette into the night more confidently than he feels and prepares his sexiest smile (one valuable thing he's picked up from rooming with Spike: gameface is fifty percent face, and fifty percent game) then turns to face the guy.  
  
  
The dim lighting renders him mysterious, pale as smoke--but thankfully not undead-pale, and Xander can tell the difference better than most. His face is unlined exceot for the corners of his eyes and mouth; dark hair spikes up around it every which way.  
  
  
He's lanky and gawky in muted, shapeless clothes . . . the same way Jesse had been. Has a certain sort of . . .  **Trouble** , the "T" very much capitalized, written all over him. Also the way Jesse had.  
  
  
The way, it turns out, that really gets Xander's engine going. After a year of celibacy--perhaps because of it, Xander's willing to admit--he's all but falling off his high horse to sport-fuck a total stranger.  
  
  
Said stranger is now sneering, hands jammed into the pockets of his long, dark woolen coat. Xander has a momentary flash of Spike: smirking, tough and cool in leather and denim. A world of Trouble in a disturbingly attractive package. Like Buffy, like Cordy. Like Faith even before she went rogue. Like Anya, from the moment he met her . . . like David, from first kiss to last--  
  
  
Although those last two had been more than worth it. Had been the first and last stable relationships of his short, odd life. . . .  
  
  
"If you're spoiling for a fight," this new flavor of Trouble says in a voice that despite--no,  _because_ of the thinly-veiled menace dripping from every syllable--is pure sex, and Xander's already half-hard. "I suggest you look elsewhere, kid. You really do  _not_  want to take me on, tonight."  
  
  
 _Fight? Take you on?_  Xander thinks incredulously, at a loss for words for nearly a minute before realization sweeps through him, makes him wish he hadn't wasted half his cigarette for crossed signals.  
  
  
"Alrighty, I think we've come out here expecting two wildly different scenarios to occur," he begins ruefully, running a hand over his closely-cropped hair. Trouble is winter-pond still, his body obviously strung tight, prepared for fight or flight, though Xander thinks it's the former. Especially when Trouble stalks a closer . . . a deceptively loose-limbed prowl that stands the vestigial, unreliable hackles the hyena had left behind right on end.   
  
  
"I've already taken a Quickening this evening . . . but don't think I'll turn my nose up at another," Trouble says softly, almost sadly, though his eyes glitter manic-bright even in the four a.m. gloom.  
  
  
"Okay, A) I have no idea what you're talking about. Second--you're kinda cute and I'm kinda horny,  _ergo_  I assumed you were giving me a  _come hither_  stare, not the Stink-Eye, or else I'd have kept my ass back inside."  
  
  
"Come hither?" Trouble asks, his forward prowl slowing to a halt, those dark, manic eyes narrowed warily. "What on Earth are you talking about?"   
  
  
Xander rolls his eye. " _Fight_  is not the 'F' I came out here lookin' for, buddy. Comprende?"  
  
  
The guy's mouth--spare, but modestly curved, would probably look even better around Xander's cock, not that that's in the offing, anymore--drops open and if ever there was a perfect description of the word 'agog', this is it. That manic gaze rake quickly, reflexively over Xander, effortlessly nudging half hard towards three quarters.  
  
  
"You . . . were expecting to have sex. With me." Trouble doesn't sound disgusted, or even disappointed, merely surprised, and a little doubtful: as if trying to see behind a particularly clever facade.  
  
  
"Give the nice man a cigar!" Xander exclaims, patting himself down before remembering he left his pack in the bar. "Before you morphed into a total dick, I might not have turned  _my_  nose up at some damn manly hijinks in the backseat of my car." He lets his eyes do some raking of their own, and despite Trouble's body-obscuring coat, feels a twinge of regret. "But then there was all the glaring and the posturing and the holy  _shit_  is that a fucking  _sword_?!"  
  
  
Trouble looks down at the sword as if surprised to find himself carrying it (when, in fact, he's probably been holding it since he came outside, hidden in the lining of the coat like the world's most disturbing sleight-of-hand). Then he looks back up at Xander with shining, unreadable eyes.  
  
  
"Yes, it is," he says simply, gravely, like the promise of violence. But quite apart from feeling afraid, or even wary, Xander grins. Then chuckles. Then guffaws, till tears blur his vision and his face is hot. Till he's leaning on his car for support, and panting.  
  
  
"It's not funny," Trouble says peevishly.  
  
  
"It's  _ginormously_  funny! You're walking around like Don Quixote, tilting at hapless, but adorable windmills whose only crime is finding you groinable . . . how can you  _not_  see the humor in that?"  
  
  
Trouble shakes his head disgustedly. "You're either mad, or drunk beyond reason."  
  
  
" _I'm_  drunk? Look who's talking, Mr. Sword-swinger-who-drinks-five-scotch-neats-in-one-night." Xander's laughter continues unabetted, and he should be doing something-- _anything_ , other than laughing himself to a possibly literal death.  
  
  
But besides Buffy, and occasionally Giles, no one in his pretty varied experience just whips out a sword expecting to do battle.  
  
  
(And though Trouble's clothes are loose, and his coat over-sized, there should be no way he could hide  _three feet_  worth of steel on his person. But then--there was no way Buffy could've been able to hide stakes in her halter tops, or miniskirts. But she had, and still does.)  
  
  
The laughter tapers off when Trouble makes some kind of fancy, aborted dueling lunge that looks completely unsuited to the huge Lancelot of a sword he's wielding. Still, it and Trouble are impressive enough that Xander swallows. The dancing crack-monkey that is his libido does a neat little jig, while a quieter part of him that appeared on the scene at the same time as the strange, giddy energy that's coursing through him, notes that the sword is clean, well-cared for, and  _old_.  
  
  
And obviously no antique yanked out of a display, in a fit of drunken pique. This is a weapon the sees  _use_.  
  
  
"Well?" Trouble gestures impatiently, the sword-tip describing a tight, graceful arc in the air. Xander's monkey does a cartwheel.  
  
  
"Sorry, I'm just re-realizing that damn near everyone I've ever been really attracted to has, at one time or other, tried to kill me. I thought I'd broken the trend awhile back, but here I am: once more torn between abject terror and inappropriate tingles."  
  
  
Trouble sighs, and the sword lowers a bit. "So you're mad, then."  
  
  
More amused than offended, Xander huffs. "I'm not the psychopath carrying a sword around Seattle, am I?"  
  
  
Now the sneer's gone beyond merely Spike-ish and into the land of fairly unattractive. "No, you just wanted to be buggered by him. Out back of a bar, no less. Classy."  
  
  
Quite the opposite of blushing, Xander blanches, the blood leaving his face so fast he gets a bit dizzy. "I made a bad judgment call. It happens, and I apologize. Let's just keep it civil, and I'll even pour you one for the road to show there're no hard feelings."  
  
  
He'd hold out his hand for shaking, if he could be certain he wouldn't pull back a stump.  
  
  
"Tell me, is this your M.O.? This . . . cute-young-innocent act to reel someone strong into your net--a little booze to take the edge of their initial caution and chalk up one more easy conquest?" Trouble is giving him a measuring once over that obviously finds him lacking. "Although you strike me as more of a leech. Is that what you are? A pretty face looking for a white knight to shield you from the big, bad world--suffer the slings and arrows you're too bloody cowardly and fragile to bear."  
  
  
Xander can feel the not-so-slow burn of anger in his stomach, clashing unpleasantly with his last shot. All the blood that left his face suddenly rushing back. and if  _that's_  how it's gonna be, screw diplomacy then. "Speaking of go fuck yourself, why don't you?"  
  
  
Trouble's eyes are alight with malice, and he doesn't seem nearly as wary as he had just a minute ago. "Ooh, touched a nerve, have I?"  
  
  
"When someone I just met flat out calls me an opportunistic whore, it tends to bother me, yeah." Xander takes a deep breath, anger heating then migrating north of his stomach, to his chest, to his throat, to his brain, making that strange buzz crackle and hiss within his skull.   
  
  
Making the Amazing Phantom Eyeball itch and throb the way it hasn't for nearly two years. For a very long moment, he can easily imagining himself rushing the guy, taking the sword . . . and something. Beheading him, maybe.   
  
  
Can see it so clearly, when the moment passes, he's shocked to find himself still rooted next to his car, an unfamiliar thrill rushing through him, seizing the buzzing lust of a few minutes ago and turning it into something that churns his gut and wraps an icy fist around his heart. Something . . . redder.  
  
  
Suddenly frightened, and a little nauseated, Xander shoves himself away from the car, instinctively making for the relative safety of the place where everyone knows his name. But he's barely taken two steps before the sword is up again,  _en guarde_ , and pointed at his chest.  
  
  
"Not so fast," Trouble grits out, and this is all getting really old, really fast. Xander takes a long breath--ready to scream, run, or talk his way out of this improbable, but mostly unscary situation--and it comes huffing back out in a surprised rush when Trouble moves a little more into the light.  
  
  
Now that he's not half-hidden in the shadows, Xander can easily place the same haunted, desperate look Buffy had worn all too often after her resurrections . . . especially the second one. Has just recently gotten used to not seeing that look in the mirror, every morning.   
  
  
It's that look that makes him certain--sword or not--that who or whatever he's dealing with isn't evil. Strange, unhappy . . . crazy, even, but not evil.  
  
  
"Hey," he hears himself saying in that same calm, unafraid voice--the Yellow Crayon Voice, as Xander will always think of it. "I'm just a bartender who  _so_  misread the signals you were sending. I don't know who or what you think I am, but I promise you I'm--not interested in swashing buckles with you in a display of bravado. I don't even own a sword."  _Well. Not anymore. Though I keep a Yoruban war ax in my trunk for emergencies._  
  
  
That sneer wavers, and Trouble laughs humorlessly. "You're trying to angle your way into getting a protector, aren't you? Someone old enough and strong enough to keep you nice and safe, isn't that right?"  
  
  
Xander's eyebrows shoot up in disbelief. The ironing of that last statement is delicious, to paraphrase a great sage. "You? Keep me safe? Look at you--I wouldn't trust you to keep your ass safe from the pavement! I don't need anyone's  _protection_ , least of all yours."  
  
  
Trouble actually looks wounded for a moment, but recovers quickly, squaring his shoulders and lowering his sword. "Good. Because I  _won't_  protect you," The half-feral light in his eyes reminds Xander of nights before the Full, when Oz'd occasionally needed to be talked down off his own wolfy bell-tower. Those times, oddly enough, it'd been Buffy that did the talking, not Willow. "I won't mentor you, or guide you. I've got my own life, my own problems . . . none of which will be served by taking on  _you_."  
  
  
"Pal, I'm not sure I wanna be in the same parking lot as you, let alone be--taken on by you." Xander snorts as snatches of the song run through his head. He has so many less-than-manly attributes to lay at Willow's doorstep. "Like I said, I can take care of myself, and I don't need Excalibur to do it."  
  
  
"Oh, really?" Trouble seems to find that genuinely funny, if the laughter's anything to go by. It's the sort of quick change in mood only the drunk or teen-aged can manage. Or the crazy. "What happens the next time you run into a 'psychopath with a sword', as you so eloquently put it? One who's immune to your rather strident brand of charm . . . what then?"  
  
  
"If he's as drunk as you? Distract him with something shiny then run." When Trouble levels a bleary, disapproving glare at him, Xander smirks, settling back against his car. He's suddenly confident he can avoid getting kebabed (in the un-fun, oh-dear-god-are-those-my-intestines way) but he may be able to do his good deed for the day and talk this guy down off an apparently sky-high bell-tower.  
  
  
For a few moments neither of them says anything. Xander stares warily at Trouble. Trouble stares unabashedly at Xander, who, since he's had years of painful practice doing it, breaks the ice.  
  
  
"So . . . how come you carry a sword around?"  
  
  
Something flickers in Trouble's eyes. "The same reason any one of us would carry a sword."  
  
  
'Us' could mean white guys, drunks, or men. Brown-haired guys, guys standing around behind the  _Tipperary Arms_ , or maybe just carbon-based life-forms.   
  
  
"I'll take  _Raging Insanity_  for a thousand, Alex?" Another offended glare, and Xander sighs. "Actually, I meant who are you carrying it as protection against?"  
  
  
That flicker again, wary and hooded. Xander's not sure he likes the look of it, but it's gone, and a wearily mocking gaze takes it's place before he can decide. "It's protection against any who would set themselves against me."   
  
  
Yep. There's a real possibility that Trouble's just a crazy, sword-wielding drunk, but that would be far too pat a solution, and Xander's learned to distrust those. And assuming this guy's not just nucking futs--which is a hell of a lot to assume, all things considered--that doesn't mean Xander's obliged to submerge himself in that world again. That awful, supernatural Sunnydale world, that swallowed parents (no matter how awful) and fiancees (no matter how ex-) whole.  
  
  
"Ever heard of Restraining Orders? Pepper-spray?" But Xander himself has a stake in his jacket pocket . . . even though said jacket is currently stuffed under the bar. He's even got spares in the trunk of his car. As well as the  _oshe_  David gave him, which he sharpens and cleans twice a month, without fail. . . .  
  
  
Just because he doesn't fight on the front lines of the war against evil, doesn't mean he has a death wish.  
  
  
"Not everyone in this world is frightened off by legalese or marinade in an aerosol can. I suspect you understand that far better than most, despite your pretense." Trouble nods knowingly when a prolonged shudder shakes Xander, settling as an icy ball in the pit of his stomach.   
  
  
Trouble could mean gay-bashers, or vampires--or gay-bashing vampires (though those'd be some pretty hypocritical vampires, considering the Watchers' journals he's read). Or some different kind of demon altogether. He could mean giant lime green aardvarks, and Xander's really sure he doesn't want to know. Would give just about anything  _not to know_.  
  
  
Trouble may have Slayer-sized problems. But that's not Xander's business. Not anymore. "Gee. Thanks ever so much for those wonderful words of encouragement, Master Qui-Gon, but I gotta go have a conversation that's not this one. You have a good night." He takes a few hopeful steps toward the door, but Trouble blocks him again, raising the sword a bit.   
  
  
Xander sighs, holds up his hands in surrender, and backs up till his ass hits the car again. "Okay, I guess the giant phallic symbol entitles you to as much air-time as you--"  
  
  
"My  _God_ \--is that all you know how to do, boy? Talk? Do you think you'll be able to gab your way out of the Game so easily?" Trouble seems angry again, and Xander does make a note of the capital "G" in "game". Another mysterious, nonsense thing that means nothing to Xander and apparently everything to Trouble.  
  
  
 _Talking drunks off their totally un-supernatural towers is hard, thirsty work, and this guy is_ exhausting _either way_. "Look, buddy--"  
  
  
"I'm not your 'buddy', mate." And yes, Trouble seems unaware of the ironing in this statement, too. "Stay on this path and someday--sooner, rather than later, you will die."  
  
  
Xander snorts. In his sadly vast experience with the undead--and / or otherwise immortal beings--and all their creepy shenanigans, living forever has never made any of them happy, just evil and paranoid. "Yeah, well . . . who wants to live forever, anyway?"   
  
  
Trouble recoils violently, as if Xander slapped him, the sword dipping toward the ground. His mouth works for most of a minute before he can formulate his reply, but his eyes are strangely lost. "It's not about living forever, but living until you're  _ready_  to stop . . . not till some young punk decides he wants to pick you off. I don't fight to live forever. I fight to  _live_."  
  
  
That echoing sound? Would be Trouble's voice ringing through the other levels of this conversation that Xander just isn't privy to  
  
  
He sighs again, shivering under bright, naked gaze. Curses his conscience. "Look . . . say you were right before, about there being things in this world that fear neither pepper-pray nor orders of Restraint. If that were true, theoretically speaking, then, well. Theoretically, if you needed help, I might know--theoretically--some people who might be able to, um, help you. Theoretically."  
  
  
"Are you offering me  _your_  protection, now? Theoretically?" Trouble cracks his first real smile of the evening, however unwillingly, and drifts closer, sword-tip dragging the ground with a gravelly-metallic scrape. That creeping, unpleasant thrill that has nothing to do with sex goes through Xander.   
  
  
"I have enough with trying to protect  _me_ , forget about you," Xander scoffs, crossing his arms and looking down at his shoes. His instinct screams at him not to, to track the progress of the crazy man who has yet to sheath his sword. Which--a detached part of him notes--could just as easily sweep up and gut him, or decapitate him. He even waits for either or both to happen with almost academic curiosity. When his head remains attached to his neck, after a few seconds, his sigh isn't sure whether it's relieved or disappointed. "I was offering help, if you need it. If you have a . . . problem that the police, or whoever wouldn't believe. I know people who'll believe, and do their best to protect you, if that's what you want."  
  
  
He risks a quick look up. Trouble's close enough for Xander to smell steel, sweat, scotch and wool. The face that'd been cute and boyish in the bar is still so, but the eyes are far, far too old for it. Like Spike's eyes, after the soul.  
  
  
"Can you really not know what you are?" Trouble asks softly, something very like dismay softening the angles of his face and the edges of his voice. He peers at Xander as if he's a book to read or a puzzle to solve.  
  
  
"I know exactly what I am: bartender. Carpenter. Glorified brick-layer. Zeppo. Scooby."  _Burnt-out ex-Watcher,_  he thinks, but doesn't add. "Oh, and a lying whore, depending on who you ask."  
  
  
"Yes, I thought you merely a clever liar, but you're not clever at all, are you? Nor much of a liar." Trouble shakes his head tiredly, as if negating an unpleasant truth. "You're a Blest Fool. An open bloody book with  _ **I'm completely clueless**_  written in bold italics on very line on every page, for anyone to read. Walking around, completely unaware of the terrible, implacable forces that surround you."  
  
  
"Uh-huh. So I'm not just a lying whore, I'm a  _clueless_  lying whore? Sir, your sweet words of flattery cause me to blush, so," Xander says flatly, seriously considering--just for a moment--knee-capping the guy and calling the cops to deal with him.  
  
  
But Trouble settles himself next to Xander against the car--not, it's to be noted, on his left side, his blind side--letting out a gusty breath. It hitches on the way out and he looks up at the overcast sky as if for aid.   
  
  
None seems forthcoming. Trouble hangs his head, still shaking it not in denial, but in disbelief. His arm twitches listlessly and  _scrape-scrape-scrape_  goes the sword. "Christ, out of every one of us you could've possibly met, you met me.  _This_  close to Seacouver, and it's  _my_  life you stumble into!"  
  
  
"If there was any stumbling tonight, it was done by you.  _You_  are exactly what I don't need in  _my_ life," Xander mumbles, but Trouble doesn't seem to hear him.  
  
  
"Have you never met a man--big, do-gooding brute of a Scot named MacLeod? No? I didn't think so, or you'd be well on your way to being one of the best swordsmen in the world, instead of a silly, naïve boy, trying to crawl into the trousers of someone who very nearly murdered him."  
  
  
Xander smiles grimly, his fists clenching, relaxing. "Very nearly tried, anyway."  
  
  
"It's rather adorable that you think you would've stood a chance against me. The puppy has teeth, after all." Trouble sounds amused, and a little sad. "And it's certainly a promising start . . . but just because I haven't killed you, doesn't mean I won't. Doesn't mean I give a damn whether you live or die. I haven't survived all this time by protecting the innocent or teaching the ignorant."  
  
  
Having heard rants like this from Spike, especially when drunk, Xander smiles briefly. "Uh-huh. And you're a survival at any cost kinda guy, am I right?"  
  
  
Trouble grins, and it's both charming and macabre. "Duncan'll gladly take in a substitute Richie Ryan. He can protect you, train you--bloody  _marry_  you, and it's good riddance, in my opinion."  
  
  
Xander blinks. "Wow. I'm really starting to see why you need to carry a sword around for protection. Taking your personality--after you've had a few--into account . . . you may wanna upgrade to a gun."  
  
  
Trouble chuckles darkly, wearily. Lets his head fall back a little. "Don't get me wrong, kid. You're more than blest. You're  _lucky_. Very few of us get to be like you: blissful and ignorant. Some days, I'd give anything to not know the things I know. To not have seen some of the things I've seen . . . done the things I've done. Making peace with the past is nothing like having no regrets."   
  
  
On this, if nothing else, Xander can sympathize. Empathize, even. He wraps his arms around himself and steadfastly ignores memories of Africa. Of a rifle so ancient, he hadn't even though it'd fire. But it had, and David had probably been dead before he hit the ground, not that that had been any comfort at the time, or has ever been a comfort.  
  
  
Not when, yet again--yet a-fucking- _gain_ \--Xander had gotten up and walked away. This time, from all of it.  
  
  
He closes his eye for a moment. Forces down the memories. Again. As permanent solutions go, it's not, but it's better than losing it like he had before his . . . retirement.  
  
  
"There's no such thing as a life without regrets. Not if you've done it right." He opens his eye and forces another smile. The light from the bar makes Trouble's skin look jaundiced. "But if it's peace you're looking for, I think what you might need is some kind of downer, or muscle relaxant. And a good night's sleep. There's a guy inside, Joe-Roddy, who'll share his meds at the drop of a hat. You can just let the anesthetic cover it all, and take a cab home. Tomorrow, you can work on turning the other cheek, or turning the giant phallic symbol--" he trails a fingertip across the guard of the sword diffidently. Not quite brushing Trouble's hand, but close enough to feel the warmth of it, "into a plowshare."   
  
  
Trouble looks over at him and suddenly smiles. It's a sad sort of smile, but it makes Xander's heart beat faster, makes him pull his hand away from the sword and look down at his feet again, feeling out of his depth and vaguely ashamed of that.  
  
  
"Opting out of reality isn't an option. For me, anyway." But that sad gaze lingers on him, curious and strangely tangible. "I've got quite used to running for my life. Hiding, turning to fight only when my back's to the wall."  
  
  
Thinking of the flash as a bullet leaves a gun that should--in an entropic universe, subject to Newtonian physics--never have fired . . . and human blood cooling on his hand, Xander hunches his shoulders and says: "Some people think it's better to be a live coward than a dead hero."  
  
  
"Those people are right sometimes. And sometimes they're not. When you get to be my age, you realize there's no such thing as an all-encompassing life philosophy."  
  
  
This is said with no little bitterness.  
  
  
"Yeah, well, you don't exactly strike me as a coward."  
  
  
"The appendices of what you don't know about me could fill the Grand Canyon to overflowing," Trouble says wryly, not unkindly. "You don't know me at all."  
  
  
"No. Not for lack of trying, though." Xander shakes his head. Can't, for the life of him, imagine what the Xander of ten minutes ago had been thinking. He can and has come out best in more bar fights than he can count, which says as much about what he used to do with his free time, as it does about how good he is in a fight. But tricking random guys who patronize the  _Arms_  (which is  _not_  a gay bar, and certainly not a pick-up scene) was worse than desperate and slutty. It was dangerous. Stupid.   
  
  
Stupider than Xander's been since he got back to the States. And he's embarrassed enough that he blushes, even though Superman couldn't see it in this dimness. "I think I need to take my gaydar  _and_  my common sense in for an overhaul."  
  
  
"Oh, your gaydar works just fine. It's just your common sense that's due for a tune-up." Trouble laughs a little, and for the first time Xander laughs with him.  
  
  
"Yeah, you can say that ag--um, did you say my gaydar works just fine?"  
  
  
That measuring, damned unsettling gaze scans Xander, and the unfamiliar sizzle in the back of his skull kicks in again like a distant radio station suddenly coming in loud and clear. Trouble opens his mouth, then closes it with a wry twist. "Blest Fool, or not, there  _can_  be only One. I doubt it'll be me, but it certainly won't be you . . . yet that doesn't mean you shouldn't live as long as MacLeod already has, say."  
  
  
"What? Only one  _what_? Who's MacLeod? What the hell are you talking about, and did you just say my gaydar works fine?"  
  
  
Trouble simply smiles and looks up at the stars again. Xander doesn't know whether to be relieved, or disappointed. Or insulted. He heaves a tired sigh. This conversation is like running a marathon. "My friend, you couldn't  _be_  more annoyingly opaque if you tried."  
  
  
Instead of answering, Trouble pushes himself away from the car with a soft grunt. The sword disappears into his coat lightning-fast. More creepy sleight-of-hand, only . . . it's not so creepy, anymore. It just seems like the weird sort of thing Trouble, the sword-carrying whacko, would do. An oddity connected with a larger oddity, but no more relevant than that.   
  
  
Xander doffs an imaginary hat and tosses it away. "I stand corrected. You've exceeded all previous levels of annoyingness and opaqueness. My hat's off to you, sir. Congratulations. You win a free scotch neat, compliments of the house."  
  
  
"Thank you, but no. As you can see, crap scotch makes me . . . maudlin and unpleasant, to say the least." Trouble rubs his face and runs his hands through his hair, spiking it up even more.  
  
  
"My scotch isn't crap, it's. . . ."  
  
  
He casts an amused, if quelling glance at Xander. "The very definition of bottom-shelf."  
  
  
"Didn't stop you from swilling, like, two beer steins worth," Xander huffs, crossing his arms.  
  
  
That quirky smile makes a brief reappearance. "Yes, and the scotch's certainly made itself heard, hasn't it? I should go before I say or do something else blisteringly offensive."  
  
  
"Or you could hang out," Xander says without thinking, then cursing the wistful, loneliness in his voice. "I mean, I've already been as offended as I've ever been, and . . . you're decent enough company when you're not threatening to disembowel me."  
  
  
"Such a glowing recommendation." Ghost of a smirk, that's just as quickly gone. "I can't imagine why you'd want to spend any more time in my company than absolutely necessary."  
  
  
"Can't you?" Xander shakes his head and blushes again. "Okay, that wasn't a come-on. I just meant that--as surreal as this conversation-slash-near-deathmatch has been, it's the most honest conversation I've had in over a year. And I'm thinking it's probably been at least that long for you, too."  
  
  
Trouble's expression doesn't change, but for a moment he seems . . . hesitant; like a man standing at the edge of an abyss and steeling himself to step off into nothing.  
  
  
"Don't presume that because I nearly killed you, we're going to bond like some awful movie. Sometimes, the kind-hearted bartender and the ne'er do well, sword-wielding drunk simply part ways at the end of the night, never to meet again," Trouble says softly, breaking gazes and turning away. "No lives are changed, and no one is redeemed. Such is life.  _Real_  life."  
  
  
Rage as blinding as blood breaks over Xander, ebbing just as quickly, leaving behind something that feels a lot like despair. Only he understands, with perfect clarity, that he's been living this feeling for much longer than the space between heartbeats. That he's boiled every area of his life down to the barest of essentials, until life is nothing more than a bad movie seen through cloudy tunnel vision. Like those first, horrible hospital days after the Vineyard . . . when everyone spoke about him in drug-distorted whispers, but not  _to_  him, except to ask him how bad the pain was before drugging him back to sleep. Where all he could dream about was Caleb's pale thumb getting closer and closer, and--  
  
  
\--and then nothing but pain and red and his own screams waking him up to the most profound sense of loss he would ever feel, until Sunnydale swallowed Anya. And again, when Africa swallowed David. . . .  
  
  
There's nothing new about this despair, other than realizing that, after four years and thousands of miles . . . he's still living it. Trapped himself in a life of sameness, mediocrity and quiet desperation.  
  
  
He nearly flies out of his skin when Trouble's hand settles gently on his shoulder.  
  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
  
"No--yeah, I'm fine, just--nothing."  
  
  
"Well, as long as you're  _sure_. . . ."  
  
  
He feels sufficiently composed to fake yet another smile, but when he tries, he fails. The sympathy in Trouble's eyes grows markedly less detached, and the hand on his shoulder--heavy, steadying, kinda not-awful--moves a little inward, fingers splayed, thumb absently stroking the flannel-covered hollow between neck and shoulder. For one irrational moment, Xander wants that hand to move further up . . . cup his face gently, gently, gently.  
  
  
But the moment passes, as moments do. Equilibrium is restored and Trouble's hand falls away, not even a little reluctantly.  
  
  
"Sorry," Xander says, then doesn't know what to follow that up with, since he's not exactly sure what he's sorry about. Trouble's searching gaze makes him uncomfortable for reasons unknown, and it takes all his borrowed cool not to shuffle and fidget. But a laugh like a startled bark gives him away. "You know, you're a master at not coming close to saying anything remotely comforting or helpful."  
  
  
"It's a skill I've worked hard to perfect." Trouble sketches a truncated bow that's not a little sardonic, though his eyes are solemn. "Anyway, I apologize for the things I said before . . . and for the way I said them. Good day, and good luck."   
  
  
"Um . . . you, too?" Xander says--to Trouble's narrow back as it gets farther away. And that, it seems, is that. The angsty half of this buddy-movie is walking into the night, shoulders squared, ridiculous sword-hiding coat billowing around long legs.  
  
  
 _Well. This is me,_  Xander thinks bemusedly.  _Letting Trouble pass me by, for once. Watch Trouble as he walks out of my life forever. . . ._  
  
  
"Hey, wait!" Xander calls, because forever is a  _really_  long time. He catches up to Trouble in a few urgent lopes but can't quite bring himself to touch the man. "Um. Hey."   
  
  
Trouble raises an eyebrow as if to say  _we meet again_ , and it's just about the coolest thing Xander's ever seen. Like something James Bond might do.   
  
  
"Listen, last call's come and gone. When I go back inside, I start rousting the drunks and shutting down for the night. So . . . if you can hang around for a bit, I'll give you a lift home, okay?" Trouble's eyebrows shoot up, and Xander runs a clammy hand over his short--too short, really, he may just let it grow out again--hair, down his nape. His skin is cool to the touch from the night air. "Just to make sure you get where you're going in one piece, I mean."  
  
  
That look seems more than a little mocking, and suddenly there's a lot less space between them. Trouble's eyes are very, very dark. "And you're sure that's all you want?" he asks, his voice all low, and smooth.  
  
  
"Yeah, I--wait a minute, are--?" Xander's eyebrows climb his forehead halfway to his hairline in disbelief. "Are you  _flirting_  with me?"   
  
  
"Possibly." The smile turns into a grin, but briefly. "Definitely. If you're still interested."  
  
  
By the time he's picked his jaw up off his collarbone, his tongue has decided what he's going to say with no input from his brain. It seems to have settled on: "Why on Earth would I be?"  
  
  
Trouble seems undisturbed by Xander's tongue's lack of tact. "That's not for me to say, but . . . you're still standing out here."  
  
  
More shocked than anything, Xander tries to give the same disdainful, thorough once-over he'd received not ten minutes ago. Tries to regain what passes for his cool under Trouble's intent gaze. "So, I'm a masochist with a soft spot for lost causes."  
  
  
"Yes, but I don't think that's why you're still here. At least that's not the only reason." Trouble's all but pressed up against Xander, whose skin isn't so cool to the touch anymore. Who can practically taste crappy scotch like he drank it. "Look. Regardless of whether or not you choose to have anything else to do with me, I'm hoping you'll find it in you to look past my boorish behavior--chalk it up to too much bad scotch, and too few manners as a result. Drawing an edged weapon isn't my usual response to the attentions of attractive young men.”   
  
  
It takes a moment to hastily translate British into American, but Xander knows when he's being charmed. And Trouble looks like ice cream wouldn't melt in his mouth . . . though this is probably not a good time to be thinking about Trouble's mouth and what wouldn't melt in it.  
  
  
Either way, Xander's an old hand at forgiving drunks their trespasses. "Forgiven, forgotten. But _this_ \--" he gently, firmly pushes Trouble away "--is no longer on the table, capische? I'll spot you a cuppa joe before I drop you off, but that's where I draw the hospitality line."  
  
  
"Alright, then," Trouble says, seemingly no worse for rejection, which, of course, makes Xander regret rejecting him.  
  
  
 _Stay strong. This guy may be cute, but he's also kinda unbalanced._ So _not the kinda Trouble I need._  He means to brush on by, and high-tail it into the warmth and predictability of the  _Arms_ , but  _his_  arm is caught in a strong, gentle grip. The strange buzzing energy in his blood intensifies, and above them lightning streaks across a placid, overcast night sky, lighting the heavens and causing them both to look up.  
  
  
When Xander looks into Trouble's secret-dark eyes again, he's pinned like a monarch butterfly. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and he catches another whiff of wool and steel, scotch and . . . ozone. The combination isn't familiar, but seems like it should be.   
  
  
"What's your name?" Trouble asks. His eyes have that glittery-suspicious look about them. Though there's curiosity there instead of malice, it's still far too intense and measuring a look for Xander to be comfortable with it.  
  
  
"Um. Xander. And you are--?"  
  
  
"I'm very pleased to meet you, Xander."  
  
  
"Riiight. Likewise . . . sorta." Ignoring the shiver of  _something_  his name on Trouble's lips causes, Xander pointedly frees his arm and lays down the Law. "So. To recap: I'll give you a lift home, and all the coffee you can guzzle, but I'm not sleeping with you."  
  
  
"Understood." Thunder rumbles again, maybe going out towards Tacoma, and Trouble takes a step to the side to let Xander pass. "I'll wait out here for you, shall I? The fresh air, such as it is, will do me some good."  
  
  
"Whatever you say."  _No_ , Xander's not disappointed that Trouble's not disappointed. Being that needy for external validation would be extremely shallow. "I should be done in twenty."  
  
  
Trouble aims his suddenly bland expression at his sneakers. "I'll be here."   
  
  
Before Xander knows it, he's standing back inside the bar, the door closing behind him as he wonders what the hell just happened.  
  
  
He half-heartedly boots the regulars, saying a polite  _thanks, but no_ , to Joe-Roddy's offer of Vicodan, locks the front door. As he collects empties and cleans glasses, his mind--still filled with that electric, insistent buzz that'd vibrated through him for most of the night, though lessening, growing somewhat distant--is still obsessing on a man who, in all likelihood, has staggered off to find trouble of his own . . . or some other hapless bartender to fuck.  
  
  
It's in the wake of the closed-throat anger that accompanies  _that_  thought that Xander really acknowledges that  _he_  still wants to be the hapless bartender Trouble fucks this night. That he could break his year long dry-spell in grand fashion if he'd just swallow his pride, and ignore the tickle of unease he gets whenever he tries to imagine what secrets that boyish face must be hiding.  
  
  
 _Self-respect blows, and survival instincts are a bitch_ , Xander thinks glumly, wiping down the bar, table tops and every flat surface capable of shining, then putting up chairs.  _Trouble_  is what and who this guy is--nothing but. Trouble that Xander doesn't need to buy  _or_  borrow, even if it's only for one night.  
  
  
One probably mediocre night. . . .  
  
  
Although . . . it's not as if Trouble had said those awful, slightly-true-in-a-certain-judgmental-light things to  _Xander_. He'd said them to who, or whatever he had thought Xander was: something it takes a sword to defend against and several glasses of cheap scotch to forget.  
  
  
Which is all the more reason to not get tangled up with this guy, even so far as to give him a lift home. Xander knows the names and numbers of five different twenty-four hour taxi services just off the top of his head. . . .  
  
  
He stops after dialing 4-2-5, then slams the cordless back into its cradle. Empties the till, then slams the cash drawer shut, too.  
  
  
By the time he washes his hands and shrugs on his jacket, it's been closer to forty-five minutes than twenty, and he's thinking:  _It'd be a good thing if he did go home with someone else. He could be that guy's problem, instead of mine, without me having to choose._  
  
  
It would be, Xander reasons, gritting his teeth, the best outcome for all concerned.  
  
  
Then the back of his brain starts buzzing with that strange energy again, building from a faint tingle, to a susurrus, to quiet roar that blots out that tiny, doubtful voice.  
  
  
Suddenly impatient, Xander sets the alarm system and double checks the front door.   
  
  
Steps out the back door to find Trouble leaning against his car like he has no intention of going anywhere else.   
  
  
Xander's heart stumbles again, and is unable to right itself.   
  
  
Trouble smiles a little wanly, but genuinely. His tired eyes aren't exactly warm, but they're very bright. He's noticeably calmer, more collected, though the effort of it shows at the edges.   
  
  
Knowing that the effort was made for him, Xander can't help the fluttery-nervous feeling that spreads through him.  
  
  
"You waited."  
  
  
"Well, sort of." Trouble turns slightly to retrieve two coffee cups from the roof of Xander's car. "Consider it an apology, and a second attempt at making a favorable first impression."  
  
  
Xander blushes, laughs, grins to show that it's  _okay_ , foot-in-mouth disease may be terminal, but it's also forgivable. At least as far as a ride to wherever Trouble lives. "Ah, but you don't know how I like my coffee."  
  
  
"I'm fairly good at reading people, so I took a chance." Trouble holds one of the cups up to his forehead and squints into the distance where grey, nebulous false dawn tints the clouds. "Loads of half-and-half, and sugar, with a light splash of actual coffee to make it respectable."  
  
  
Xander pulls the door shut behind him, listens for the whir and beep as the alarm engages, then takes a few steps closer to Trouble. And a few more and a few more, till he's close enough to smell fresh-brewed Arabian Mocha Sanani, and yes, obscene amounts of half-and-half. "Good guesser. And you seem a lot more steady than you did a little while ago, by the way."  
  
  
That graceful, nonchalant shrug is convincing, but for the bitter twist that hijacks his smile for a moment. "I've always recovered quickly."  
  
  
"Lucky you. Okay, Weapon X, how do I know you're not trying to slip me a mickey?"  
  
  
Trouble's smile widens, and the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle. "If it makes you feel better, you can have what's left of  _my_  coffee. I take it black, no sugar."  
  
  
"Ugh. I'll risk the mickey," Xander says, shuddering melodramatically. He reaches out for the cup, but Trouble pulls his arm back, holding it out of reach.  
  
  
"You're so mature." Rolling his eyes, Xander steps into Trouble's personal space--ready, it is also to be noted, to throw-down for the coffee he's by-God  _earned_ \--and into a sneak-attack of a kiss that tastes like cheap scotch and expensive coffee.   
  
  
Ethiopian Sidamo, if Xander knows his Starbucks, and Xander  _does_.  
  
  
After a few moments of letting himself be kissed, he curls his fingers into dark, scratchy wool and tugs Trouble closer, causing a surprised noise in the back of the other man's throat that says he isn't nearly as confident as he lets on. Xander's own response is not at all tentative, though it's unhurried. As comfortable as if they've been kissing each other like this for years, despite the white-hot rush it sends through Xander.  
  
  
The way it makes the hair on his arms stand up, his body hunger and thirst for more.  
  
  
 _What the hell am I doing?!_  
  
  
Xander breaks the kiss abruptly, though it's nearly painful to do so. For a few seconds, all he can do is try to calm the frantic beating of his heart. Then he snatches the coffee from a distracted Trouble's hand. Their fingers brush and there's a static shock that crackles loud enough to be clearly audible.  
  
  
A grin is stealing across Trouble's face, and there's considerable warmth in his eyes, now. Or maybe it's just heat.  
  
  
"Sneaky," he says, and Xander has to fight off an answering grin of his own.   
  
  
"Next time, don't get between a Xander and his caffeine fix." Flushed and flustered, he takes a hurried, not-quite-scalding sip and his eye closes in rapture. "God, you weren't just whistlin' Dixie about the half-and-half."  
  
  
"No, I wasn't." When Trouble's hands settle on his hips, urging him close again, he resists, but ineffectually and half-heartedly.  
  
  
"Or about your coffee-choosing prowess. This is my favorite blend."  
  
  
"We aim to please." There's just enough illumination from the bar and the street-lamps for Xander to notice how dilated Trouble's pupils are. "And  _this_  is me hitting on you, for future reference."   
  
  
"Good to know. Still not gonna sleep with you," Xander avers with less-than-convincing conviction.   
  
  
"Yes, I recall you saying something to that effect earlier . . . I'd like to take you out to dinner if you're free later tonight."  
  
  
"Sorry, I'm not. I have this prior engagement called 'work'. . . ."  
  
  
"Right. Breakfast, then?"  
  
  
"No can do, tomorrow morning I've gotta stay late and do inventory--"  
  
  
"How about right now?" Gentle lift to those straight, dark brows. " _Lolita's_  makes an excellent waffle breakfast."  
  
  
"Waffle breakfast?" Xander perks up, then kicks himself for showing his twin Achilles heels: waffles and breakfast. "No--look, I think us sharing a meal-any meal, would be a bad idea. Really bad. Like, opening-an-ice-cream-parlor-on-the-sun bad. And since I'm never gonna sleep with you anyway, breakfast'd be pointless."  
  
  
"Utterly pointless.” Those daring hands slide into the back pockets of Xander's jeans and pull him closer. The electric warmth of  _them_  negates the damp spring chill that lingers in the air. “I'm Adam, by the way."   
  
  
Despite the fact that he's staring at Trouble's-- _Adam_ 's lips, it still takes a few moments for Xander to work out the seeming non sequitur. "Xander--but you already know that. And what a coincidence! I make a point of never, ever sleeping with, or having meals with guys named Ad--"  
  
  
Then he's being kissed again, held tight in wiry, strong arms and moved, so that he's the one pressed against the car. The coffee is plucked from his hand, and the amiable ease of the previous kiss changes to something urgent, harder. Something that demands as much as it gives, and in a way Xander can't ignore or hold out against. The electric buzz that fills him fairly keens from the force of it, and all he can do. . . .  
  
  
The only choice is to surrender to the moment, just . . . surrender.  
  
  
Above them, thunder rumbles, lightning crashes, and a bell in Xander's mind begins to ring. For what or whom it tolls is anyone's guess. He's too far gone to note it more than absently.  
  
  
"Oh, God," he pants when Adam lets him up for air. Everywhere their bodies are in contact, he can  _feel actual electricity_. Like a really intense static shock.  
  
  
"'Adam' will do just nicely," Adam says huskily, leaning his forehead against Xander's. "I like kissing you a lot better than killing you."  
  
  
"Thank you. But please never say that again."  
  
  
Adam chuckles and steals another kiss--several, actually--light and playful; but even  _that_  tingles all over, lights up the back of Xander's eyelids. Both of them. . . .  
  
  
“Wait--stop--” he pushes at Adam's shoulders, and Adam reluctantly ends the kiss, taking a step back. Xander tries to read the expression on his face: pleased, annoyed, aroused . . . curious, of course. And that feral Oz-light is back in his eyes.  
  
  
"You're right. We should continue this back at my flat."  
  
  
"Yeah, we-- _no_! There will be no continuing, and no flat! You need to respect my decision not to fuck you!"  
  
  
That's definitely warmth in Adam's eyes, and laughter. It's more appealing a look than Xander's prepared to deal with. "Mm, I  _do_  respect your decision. Which is why I'm more than happy to top tonight."  
  
  
"That's  _not_  what I meant, and you know it!" Xander protests, even as Adam's body presses into his, jumping with tension and kinetic energy, hard in some places, harder in others . . . and he's too busy shaking and moaning as if he'd never been touched before to stick to his guns. Squirming and writhing like a greedy cat, one sneakered foot rubbing agitatedly up and down Adam's calf before hooking his leg around it.  
  
  
"This--this is  _insane_ ," he growls. With a twist and pivot, their positions are once again reversed, a startled  _oof!_  slipping from Adam's lips. "I don't know you, yet I'm pretty sure I don't like you. I'm  _certainly_  not gonna sleep with you, despite the . . . this, that's happening right now. But there's-- _something_  between us. I'm not imagining it, am I?"  
  
  
"No, you're not." Adam leans back, smiling wistfully, almost proudly. As if Xander's done or said something he tacitly approves of. "It's real. It's a . . . a kind of magic, that's all."  
  
  
Not what Xander wants to hear at. All. "I don't trust magic, and I don't trust people who wield it at the drop of a hat." He lets go of Adam's coat and takes a few steps back, both physically and mentally. He's seen firsthand the wonderful, terrible things magic can do--can inspire people to do in its name. Even the most well-intentioned magic can be a slippery slope to devastation.  
  
  
It's all part of the life Xander left behind. His current one may be boring, and lonely . . . but it's better than constantly seeing everything he loves taken away from him.  
  
  
"Xander . . . what's between us isn't something  _I'm doing_  or you're doing, rather it's something we  _are_." Adam moves into  _Xander_ 's personal space and takes his hand. Pulls it up to eye-level. More of that weird static electricity is crackling and crawling--visibly, frenetically--over their linked fingers, like tiny blue-white lightning. It tingles, makes the hairs on his hand and fingers stand on end, but it doesn't hurt. " _This_ , we cause by being who we are, and by being so close to each other."  
  
  
Adam squeezes Xander's hand and lets it go to cup his face. His own hands are heavily calloused, as much as Xander's used to be, though in different places, and for much different reasons. But his thumbs, as they ghost across Xander's lips, are gentler by far than feathers, followed by kisses that are gentler still. Kisses that land on mouth, nose, cheek, eyelid, and patch.  
  
  
"Why should I believe you?" Xander demands, turning his face away, fighting not to get swallowed by sensation yet again. He's struck by a strong need to call Willow and tell her that he finally,  _finally_  understands her previous struggles with magical addiction. How magic of any kind not only pulls you under, but makes you crave the drowning. "I just met you an hour ago, and in that time, you've done little more than threaten me, insult me,  _confound_  me--then try to sleep with me!  _You_  are obviously unhinged. Why should I trust anything you say?"  
  
  
Adam's brow furrows as if this level of distrust, while very much approved of, is getting to be disheartening. "There's no reason for you to trust me. Knowing me better would be unlikely to give you that reason. You'll have to take a leap of faith."  
  
  
Xander snorts. "A leap of faith for the strange guy who's not sure if he wants to kill me or fuck me? Yeah, I don't think so. The only thing I have faith in is my friends. Who you are not one of."  
  
  
Lightning strikes, and somewhere overhead thunder rumbles. Adam's eyes seem to flash in the brief light. "Then do what your gut tells you," he says, leaning against the car again as thunder booms again in the distance. He looks over Xander's shoulder, into the distance.   
  
  
 _Oh, well, thanks,_  Xander thinks angrily. Or tries to. Mostly, he just wants to mold himself to Adam like cling-wrap and shut his mind off for the time being. To let their skin speak to each other in the strange electrical language it favors.   
  
  
It's the most powerful physical response Xander's ever had to another human being. So powerful it's trying to take his heart with it, though at least his brain is making a last, valiant stand:  
  
  
 _It'll just be a one time thing, to take the edge off, and I never have to see him again. That's how the game is played. One-night stands mean nothing--less than nothing. We don't even know each others' last names. We just go, get off, and I get gone! It doesn't even have to be great, just adequate. He'll probably fall asleep halfway through--or get whiskey-dick! Though, if I top, that last one shouldn't be a problem. . . ._  
  
  
Then his brain instant-replays the way Adam felt against him, hard and hot, even through their clothes, and Xander sighs.   
  
  
 _You are less than helpful,_  he tells his traitor-brain, even as he nudges Adam's legs apart to stand between them. Catching up double handfuls of scratchy wool and yanking Adam so close, all he can see is a dark-pale blur.   
  
  
"C'mon, take me to your place and show me your etchings--so long as we're clear this is just a one time thing, 'kay?" Xander wonders which of them he's trying to convince more.  
  
  
"You'll never have to see me again, if you don't want to."  _But you'll want to,_  that tone seems to add. Xander knows he should find that kind of towering self-confidence irritating and off-putting. But it's strangely endearing, and a bit of a turn-on.  
  
  
Then Adam's arms are sliding around him again, the cool tip of his nose warming quickly against Xander's cheek. Humid breaths tickle his lips, make him yearn for Adam's kiss from the top of his head to bottom of his being.  
  
  
But Adam doesn't kiss him, just pulls him close and holds him. The energy that's in them and between them overwhelms Xander for a few moments like a dozen hits of Ecstasy—makes him feel like the God of Kingdom come. Demands of him actions that'd get them both tossed in the city lock-up for public indecency.  
  
  
"May I ask you something?" Adam murmurs.  
  
  
Xander sighs, closes his eye. Sees colors and shapes on both eyelids, and kicks himself for being suggestible. "I might plead the Fifth, but sure."  
  
  
"Is this a wooden stake in your jacket, or are you just happy to see me?"  
  
  
That was  _so_  not the question Xander expected. Though if asked what question he'd expected, he couldn't have said. He retrieves his car keys and catches the clever fingers before they can do anymore investigating. At least of the stake. "Haha. Just get in the car before my gut changes its mind."   
  
  
Adam pulls an innocent face that's not remotely believable. Xander rolls his eye. "And don't even  _imagine_  I'm letting you top."  
  
  
Xander shuts off his car alarm and unlocks the passenger door. Strides around to the driver's side, pretending he doesn't see the knowing smirk on Adam's face.  
  
  
  


**Seattle, WA. Present Day**

  
  
  
_A split second before his heart starts beating again, he's aware of a familiar hum.  
  
  
It doesn't build . . it hits him, like a wall of force. Where there had been empty nothing, darkness without beginning or end, He now feels a need to _act _. To do. To fight, to run, to fuck, to tear his clothes off and scream himself hoarse under the cracking dome of the sky. . . .  
  
  
The need shakes his body; opens his eye, but makes him blind to the pyrotechnics around him, deaf to the thunder above.  
  
  
He gasps in ecstasy and pain, joy and horror. That keen, that wail, that quiet hum that's been with him for as long as he's existed . . . that's his _life-force _. Flowing back into him, reanimating every cell in his body simultaneously, twitching him like a frog on a hot skillet.  
  
  
The energy ratchets up to one last primal scream that boils his blood and sucks the air from his lungs as quickly as it's dragged in. Leaves him shocked and numb, shaking and gasping for what feels like eternity.  
  
  
Familiar arms encircle him, rock him until the last of the scream is nothing more than the simple, background thrum he's ignored for his whole life, unaware that it wasn't something everyone felt, something that it made him different.  
  
  
It's only then that he notices, comforting even when he didn't realize what it was, or that it was there, the Adam-sense. Swift and quiet, like a deep river, like a harmony he can feel all throughout his being, but can't quite touch or explain.   
  
  
_The Quickening _.  
  
  
He remembers that word from Before. Doesn't understand how it--the crazy, confused mystical crap Adam and MacLeod, and even Joe Dawson had tried to talk him into believing. Till Adam had decided words weren't working fast enough--all fits together, what it all means. But he knows, now, that the wonderful, electric-river feeling that he'd thought was a part of their love is nothing but magnetism. A kind of magic. A lure to draw him to others and vice versa, as part of a Game that only one person can win.   
  
  
And like a distant, discordant note, under and behind the Adam-sense (somehow _away _), is an aggressive crackle, like hi-def, surround-sound movie thunder coming from a theater on the other side of a large cineplex. . . .  
  
  
He names that particular crackle _MacLeod _, shivers. The arms around him hold him tighter. And though he wants more than anything to stay in this safe, comforting darkness, he knows better than most how unsafe darkness truly is. So he opens his eye, prepared for anything, and finds a sight as familiar as the arms encircling him.  
  
  
The homey, yellow night-light glow casts benign shadows everywhere, giving waking reality the soft, charcoal-smudge edges of dreams.  
  
  
He's laying in bed, on his left side, looking at the south-facing wall of their bedroom, with its paintings and photos, and an old, scarred dresser covered with odd brick-a-brack. More of the same on shelves that he'd hand-made to hold Adam's scads of books. They actually hold small antiques and other shiny junk that catches his boyfriend's magpie-eye. Books wind up stacked haphazardly next to chairs and in corners.  
  
  
Behind him, a body as familiar as his own is pressed skin-close, arms wrapped around him, face buried in his hair. He leans back into the embrace, letting loving nonsense-words wash over him, comfort him for these few brief moments before he remembers. . . .   
  
  
This is the same loving nonsense that'd comforted him as a dagger severed his spine, and skewered lung and heart in the process. The pain of that had been beyond comprehension. And even worse that--much worse than losing his eye, and Anya and David combined--was the knowledge that, with MacLeod in front of him, and Dawson sitting across the room, only one other person could be responsible for what was surely his death.  
  
  
“I'm sorry, but this was the only way to prove it to you,” that person, his boyfriend,  _his Adam_ , whispers, just like he had Before. And: “It was for your own good. I had to make you believe.”  
  
  
He closes his eye again, not  _wanting_  to believe, not wanting to _see _anything in a world where the person he loves more than anything had killed him . . . then held the corpse till it came back to life.  
  
  
But he can't find it in him to pull away . . . only breathe.   
  
  
Be.   
  
  
Let himself be clung to, and wonder why he feels so numb and empty.  
  
  
His eye squeezes shut tighter, trapping sight and tears, but ineffectively blocking knowledge he never wanted to have. “Why did you tell me?" It doesn't hurt to talk. After the way he'd . . . died . . . he'd have expected at least a twinge. But there's no sign of injury, no phantom pains. For some reason, this is especially horrifying. "Why couldn't you just let me be clueless and _happy _, till someone like MacLeod chopped my fucking head off?”  
  
  
“Because, I love you,” Adam says desperately, his voice soft and washed out, like old silk. "*Because I love you more than word can wield the matter, Xander Harris; dearer than eyesight, space and liberty.*"  
  
  
"I don't want this." Now he tries to pull away, to curl in on himself, but Adam's always been physically stronger, despite his lean build. Now, he entangles their arms and legs--cleaves so tightly, there's no telling where one of them ends and the other begins. "I don't want to fight anymore, and I don't want to kill ever, ever again."  
  
  
"You have to, and you will," Adam says, the faded silk voice turning as cold and unyielding as the sword he carries. "I may not have meant to fall so hard, no, nor so fast . . . but I did. And I have no intention of letting either you, or my life go, anytime soon. So live. Learn. Grow stronger. _Fight _, Xander . . . because I can't bear to live without you."  
  
  
“Please don't say that,” he asks, trying to shut his eye tighter, trying to shut it all _out _. But he can still hear; he still knows. "I don't want it. Any of it."  
  
  
Adam's hushes him, and holds him. Promises him it'll be better in time--ignoring the choked, unhappy laughter that is his only response. Eventually murmured reassurance turns into a murmured melody: "_. . . a dozen red roses for my darling, aye, and journey'd down the road. . . . _"  
  
  
But it's not this voice--the warm, loving one he's grown so used to, wanted to grow old hearing--that follows him into darkness.  
  
  
_There can be only One, _the Adam of one year ago whispers playfully, eyes glittering with contempt and malice._ I doubt it'll be me, but it certainly won't be you. . . .  
  
  
 _It's a fragile hope, but the only one he has to cling to._  
  
  


*

  
  
  
* **Paraphrased from King Lear, (1.1.55–56)**


	3. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for slashthedrabble prompt “broken”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and "Horsemen", part of the Immortal!verse. Also post "Princes of the Universe" by two months. AU for Highlander, mild spoilers.

The fight is over quickly.  
  
  
He's no expert, but even an untrained eye can tell that Adam-- _Methos_ \--is the faster, more skilled combatant.  
  
  
So it's with a detached lack of surprise that Xander watches the other Immortal's head part ways with his neck, and roll away amongst rusted, condemned machinery. Adam's Ivanhoe clatters to the ground, and his spare mouth forms some message, only for it to be swept away in a furious, kinetic wind that has lightning on its back.  
  
  
Some strange, new instinct--not the first, and surely not the last--urges him into the maelstrom. Forward and forward, till he's close enough to feel the hot, angry crackle of electrical discharge. Till he can see the light of another man's memories flare restlessly in his lover's hazel eyes.  
  
  
 _Xander_ , Adam's lips shape, before cold fire rips through two bodies that will never, ever die.  
  
  
Despite all the lightning, the world goes gently dark for a time. . . .  
  
  


*

  
  
  
Whatever else he is, Adam's a dyed-in-the-wool intellectual who literally  _hmm_ s when asked such tricky questions as, “do I have a soul?"  
  
  
The eventual response is: "That depends on your definition of a 'soul', and to whom it would extend, if not all sentient beings."   
  
  
Such a qualified answer, for early morning on a filthy factory floor . . . it occurs to Xander that if he still felt emotions, he'd love this man very, very much. “Can't you ever just say yes or no?"  
  
  
"Pose me a yes-or-no question, my love, and I'll give you a yes-or-no answer."  
  
  
He thinks that over, as Adam strokes his hair and dawn begins to light broken, dirty windows.   
  
  
Finally, Adam sighs. It's a weary, almost hopeless sound.  
  
  
"You have as much of a soul as any other human being--a good deal more, I'd wager," he murmurs, and Xander looks up from the cradle of his lap. Catalogs the familiar features the only way he can, these days: clinically. Dark, deep-set eyes, long and narrow like the rest of him, regard Xander intently.   
  
  
Curiously tender fingers leave his hair to brush his lips, soft as a kiss.  
  
  
 _My soul must be broken then, because I don't feel anything, anymore,_  Xander thinks, not for the first time . . . but doesn't say. Doesn't turn Adam's sleepy, unguarded smile he used to get in the mornings--that says  _I'm happy you're here_ \--back into the haunted, yearning look that's there all the time, lately.  
  
  
He wants to say  _I'm happy you're here, too_ , and mean it.  
  
  
But he can't.  
  
  
So he bobs up--initiates an awkward kiss that makes Adam respond needily and clumsily, moaning two months worth of choked  _I love you_ s.  
  
  
Despite this, the gulf between them seems wider than ever. . . .  
  
  
Xander pulls away, wiping his mouth and avoiding eye contact.   
  
  
They don't speak all the way home.


	4. Porcelain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for slashthedrabble prompt “broken”, and more than partially inspired by "Porcelain," by Better Than Ezra. Please heed the warning below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Who? Me?  
> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and "Horsemen". Takes place not too long after the ficlet "Broken." AU for Highlander, mild spoilers.   
> WARNING: DUB-CON.

“No,” Xander sighs, shortly after they've gone to bed and turned out the lights--after Methos's hand brushes his hipbone, and slips into baggy sweatpants.  
  
  
But unlike every other time he's initiated sex recently, Methos doesn't listen--isn't deterred by the lack of reciprocation.  
  
  
It's easy, he's found, to be bold when the lights are out.  
  
  
For awhile, there's nothing but the sound of their breathing: slow and heavy. Rapid and light. "It's been three months.”  
  
  
“The last time we tried was a disaster,” Xander says in the same indifferent tone with which he says everything, lately. “I don't want to disappoint you again.”   
  
  
“Then don't.” Methos moves closer, and stroking harder, until  _Xander's_  hard, and his breath rasps. This is no small victory. “Does every waking moment have to be about making me pay for your Immortality? About wallowing in passive aggressive martyrdom over something neither of us can control?”  
  
  
An deeply indrawn breath--arousal, or epiphany? Methos doesn't know. Doesn't know what, if anything, Xander allows himself to feel, anymore. All he knows is he's close enough to share body heat, and taste shower-warmed skin for the first time in months. . . .  
  
  
He wants to wrap himself in it: in Xander's arms, and the familiar white-noise of his Quickening.  
  
  
“If that's what you think then why're you still here?” That indifference has grown slightly uneven. Offense? Anger? Again, it's anyone's guess, and Methos is very tired of guessing. “Why don't you leave?”  
  
  
“Why don't  _you_?” Methos suddenly pins Xander with his body and bites down on one earlobe. Rides out the shudders and strangled noises before continuing. “Nevermind, you're too busy blaming me for everything to give an honest answer, anyway.”  
  
  
There's no response for so long, he stops expecting one. Shimmies Xander's sweatpants down and starts grinding slow and hard against him. Xander's quiet  _no_ s hitch gratifyingly at the skin-on-skin contact.  
  
  
“Tell me you still love me,” Methos whispers--begs--kissing jaw and neck, then back to the earlobe he abused earlier, laving it gently. He remains undiscouraged when Xander turns his face away from a kiss.  
  
  
“Why? It won't fix what's brok-- _oh_!” Xander gasps and jerks sharply, untrimmed nails gaining painful purchase in Methos's shoulder and bicep as he comes . . . and comes. Silently--and apparently to both their surprise.  
  
  
Grinning, still hard, Methos tries to roll them on their sides but, shaking and panting, Xander pulls away.  
  
  
“Don't,” he says hoarsely, and: "Bastard."  
  
  
Two seconds later, the door to the bathroom slams shut. . . .  
  
  
Ten minutes later, it hasn't opened. There's no light coming from under it, no noise whatsoever. But Methos--as unbearably hard as he's ever been--is oddly content.   
  
  
Anger wasn't the emotion he was hoping to tease out, no, but it's better than nothing. The first, large step down a long, hard road.  
  
  
But if there's anything five thousand years have taught Methos--who finishes himself off efficiently and quietly before falling asleep--it's patience.


	5. Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I blame society for my theivery.  
> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and "Horsemen". Takes place the day after the ficlet "Porcelain." AU for Highlander, mild spoilers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Written for slashthedrabble prompt “broken”.

It's not hot, like he remembers.  
  
“Love?”  
  
Anger.  
  
“You've been in there for hours. . . .”  
  
It's cold. Like Christmases in England, only there're no snowflakes--  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
\--no cute English kids, no carols sung in shrill little accents, like something out of Oliver Twist. No, his anger--  
  
“Look, about . . . about last night. . . .”  
  
\--is brittle.  
  
“Come out of there, love.”  
  
Cold.  
  
“Please, I'm . . . worried. . . .”  
  
Yet his breath comes fast, and too-hot--  
  
“Look, I promise, I won't touch you, just. . . .”  
  
\--rebounds humidly off the wall of the shower.  
  
“Xander?”  
  
Leaning his head against the tiles, he lets the cold burn inward.


	6. Conversations With Dead People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the slashthedrabble prompt “points of the compass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Ni!  
> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen". Takes place within a few days of "Cold." Vague spoilers for BtVS. AU for Highlander. Part of the Immortal!verse

  
“Love.”  
  
  
Xander doesn't roll over, doesn't acknowledge Adam in any way. Doesn't flinch when a gentle, hesitant hand lands on his shoulder.  
  
  
“I have to go to class . . . I'll probably be gone all day. . . .”  
  
  
When Xander doesn't respond, Adam's hand slides away. There's an expectant silence, as if Adam wants to say more. But in the end, he kisses the back of Xander's head and leaves quietly.  
  
  
“ _Your_  whole problem,  _love_ , is you turned your heart into a bloody compass.”  
  
  
Unsurprisingly, Spike starts in as soon as the door shuts behind Adam. It's hard to ignore him, just like in the basement, when all he did was brood, smoke, and glare desolate-eyed threats around the zappings of the chip.  
  
  
It was hard to ignore Spike  _then_  because Spike was hot. Now, well . . . if there's one thing Xander's learned, it's that one never ignores the restless dead. And Spike is restlessly dead at least three times over, the latest due to Angel's ginormous, city-demolishing clusterfuck.  
  
  
“Now that that compass's been ripped out of you, you're adrift, directionless. Lost . . . and I think that's what I always hated most about you.” Spike sits on the bed, half in the shadows, half in the forgiving yellow lamplight. He still looks tired and beat-up, though. “You remind me of . . . me.”  
  
  
Well. This is a whole new level of insult. One Xander finds appalling and hurtful.  
  
  
Spike laughs, and casts him a sidelong glance. “Believe you me, I'm not exactly doing back-flips, either. But it's the truth, you know? The first time my heart was ripped out of me, I stumbled into a vampire's arms, and threw my entire life away.”  
  
  
Xander watches the play of light on Spike's hands. The way he ceaselessly picks at his ragged _Morte_  nail polish.   
  
  
What happened to William Pratt was awful. But at least he  _had_  a soul. Has a--is--whatever.  
  
  
“Who says you don't have a soul?” Spike asks, almost kindly.  
  
  
Xander closes his eyes and rolls onto his back. Remembers Adam's iffy, qualified answer that night in the warehouse, and feels the empty spaces within keenly.  
  
  
“ _Adam_. Your sodding boyfriend--excuse me,  _life partner_.” A derisive snort. “For all that he's a bloody  _old_ fuck, he's just as stupid as the rest of us, when it comes to love.”  
  
  
Xander almost smiles, and the raw, gaping hole dead-center in his being hurts just a bit less.   
  
  
Then it gets ever so much  _worse_.  
  
  
“He kept the truth from you. Shouldn't've, but men've done worse things in the name of Love than lie. That love is what keeps him by your side--killing in your name, you dozy twat.”  
  
  
Maybe. There've only been two challenges that Xander knows of. But then, Adam's a liar. There could've been twenty, or a hundred, or--  
  
  
\--whose fucking side is Casper on, anyway?  
  
  
“Yours, mate. Always root for the underdog, me.”   
  
  
A chilly finger ghosts briefly across Xander's cheek, and for the first time in months, he smiles.


	7. Conversations With Dead People Redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A revisiting of the events surrounding the ficlet "Conversations With Dead People."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word Count: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 = 1500  
> Disclaimer: Ni!  
> Note: Part of the Immortal!verse. Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen". A follow-up to "Cold." Vague spoilers for BtVS. AU for Highlander.

100

  
  
Xander blinks once, then twice more.   
  
  
Shrugs, and shuffles into the livingroom for his afternoon nap.  
  
  
 _It could be worse_ , he reckons, devoid of malice or surprise upon seeing an all-the-way-dead Spike after five years.  _I could be haunted by Angel, or my parents._  
  
  
“How d'you know I'm a ghost, and you're not just barking?” Spike asks curiously, watching Xander make himself at home on the couch, back turned to keep the afternoon sunshine from disturbing his sleep.  
  
  
 _Because . . . I'd have hallucinated someone I actually like._  
  
  
Spike is still laughing when Xander slips off to dreamland.  
  
  


200

  
  
It's well after noon when Xander shuffles out of the bedroom.  
  
  
“You're still here,” he says, only meaning Adam, but both he and Spike look up.  
  
  
“Yes, well . . . I thought I'd take a day off. The TAs can handle my Intro to Philosophy section.” Adam smiles, and moves a stack of papers onto the coffee table. “Sit down. I can make you lun--breakfast, I suppose.”  
  
  
Xander takes a step backward, toward the safety of their bedroom. Since  _The Incident_ , the bedroom is the one place he can count on being left alone. Except for Spike.  
  
  
“I was thinking . . . we might go out for a walk later. If you like.” Adam can keep the hope out of his voice, but not his eyes.  
  
  
“I--” Xander's mouth works-- _hell, you look like a bloody carp, mate_  is Spike's unhelpful contribution--but nothing comes out.  
  
  
How do you tell someone who's not afraid of anything that you're afraid of  _everything_? Afraid you might have to kill just to stay alive--and that you won't be able to?  
  
  
You don't.   
  
  
Xander hasn't.  
  
  
“I'm tired,” he mumbles, ducking back into the bedroom. Shutting the door on Adam's misplaced hope and Spike's keen-eyed consideration.  
  
  


300

  
  
It's three a.m., and Xander rarely sleeps at night, anymore.   
  
  
Even before Spike started haunting him, he'd been prone to keeping a vampire's hours. Sunlight--even Seattle sunlight--fills him with wordless anxiety.  
  
  
Next to him, but at a discreet distance, Adam breathes evenly. He's  _probably_  asleep, but a five thousand year old man has surely learned to fake sleep pretty well. Xander doubts he is, however.  
  
  
“You're wasting it, mate.”  
  
  
Spike's voice comes from the darkness near the dresser, tired, and disappointed. His accent makes him sound more than a little like Adam, saying the things Adam stopped saying weeks ago.  
  
  
 _You're wasting eternity_ , he'd rail. Angrily. Then tiredly. Then hopelessly. Then . . . not at all. Xander hadn't felt one way or the other about it, then. Now--  
  
  
Adam rolls over suddenly, spooning up behind Xander, one arm and leg thrown over him. His breath is warm, smells like expensive whisky.  
  
  
He drinks a lot more than he used to. Comes home smelling of it, but not of other men, or women. Not yet.  
  
  
Soon, he might. Soon, he'll  _get it_ , that there's nothing left to save, not after the warehouse. Soon Adam'll realize it's  _over_ , and . . . Xander's not sure how he feels about that. About not having Adam, even though he's fairly sure Adam's the last thing he wants to want, anymore.  
  
  
“All you have to do is kiss him, mate.” Spike's voice is as dark and persuasive as the bedroom. “Let him wake up to your lips, and your hands--to your love. Just once more. Take my advice, Harris, before you. . . .”  
  
  
When the silence has drawn out, Xander--utterly still under Adam's arm--wonders,  _before I--?_  
  
  
Though he's certain he already knows.  
  
  
It's nearly dawn before Spike answers, and Xander's almost asleep.  
  
  
“Before you kill the poor bastard.”  
  
  


400

  
  
It happens . . . and it's nothing like Spike suggested it might be.  
  
  
After so much time, Adam's kiss is more of a shock than Dead-boy, Jr. is still a consummate bullshit artist. Xander'd  _forgotten_  how soft, how wet, how warm that mouth--how snakishly agile that tongue is, and that Adam often tastes of whatever he's been imbibing--usually expensive scotch.  
  
  
How those long, elegant fingers can be delicate, strong, loving, precise, punishing . . .  _everything_.  
  
  
Now, they destroy whatever clothing proves too complex to remove in a pitch-dark bedroom.  
  
  
Adam pins Xander to their bed, and pushes his legs apart and up--they find their proper places on his shoulders as if no time has passed.  
  
  
"Jesus-fucking-Christ," Xander groans.  
  
  
"Never met the man." Adam's index and middle fingers brush Xander's lips, and he sucks on them long enough to wet them thoroughly. Seconds later, those fingers are stabbing into him fast and hard; repeatedly. "For most of the first century A.C.E., I was traveling in Hindu-Kush, with an Immortal  _rishi_ , called Suravinda."  
  
  
"Shut. Up.” Bright colors explode and fall on the backs of Xander's eyelids. The smooth sussurus that is Adam's Quickening becomes a roar, and their skin prickles with visible electricity.  
  
  
Adam swears--it sounds like  _sodding lube_ \--and Xander catches his hand before it reaches the night table. Links their fingers.  
  
  
“Forget it. I'll pretty much be healed by morning, right?"  
  
  
“Pretty much,” Adam's agrees gravely, but he's  _in_  Xander before he's finished speaking, and--  
  
  
\-- _God_ , it  _hurts_. After four months, taking Adam in one thrust, with no slick and little preparation  _hurts_  enough to make him scream hoarsely. Makes his ragged fingernails gain purchase in Adam's arm.   
  
  
But it's good, too;  _so_  good. It's merciless and erratic, and Adam's grip is bruise-tight. His choked-off words are a strange mix of English, French, Arabic, and something else Xander couldn't place if he tried. But he's not. He's laughing, because it's all so fucking inevitable: the pleasure, the pain. Adam's sweaty, sinewy body against his own. The desperate words spilling from his lips.  
  
  
The bright, revelatory flash--like light on steel in--Xander's mind as he comes, Adam a split second behind him. . . .  
  
  
There's a brush of cold, dry lips against one ear, and warm, wet ones on the other.  
  
  
“I've missed you. I love you,” Adam pants, holding him tight as Spike whispers: “Soon now, pet.”  
  
  


500

  
  
Sex--like food, and a life outside their apartment--is something Xander's had no appetite for since the night he found out he was Immortal.   
  
  
Now, he can't get enough of Adam's touch, his kisses, his body. He's been starving for months, but the famine, it would appear is over.  
  
  
“If only I'd known you were this much fun before Sunnyhole went sink,” Spike says wistfully, from the direction of the toilet. But Xander ignores him, in favor relearning every inch of Adam's mouth, as Adam relearns every inch of his body. The needy sounds they both make echo off the walls of the shower.  
  


*

  
  
  
Xander doesn't even realize he's been dozing, until he's awakened by a teasing kiss, and the smell of breakfast.  
  
  
“I'd say 'good morning', but I deplore understatement,” Adam says--wryly as always, but chipper in a way Xander is surprised to have missed—settling a tray between them. It's piled high with more food than Xander's eaten in weeks: toast, bacon, waffles, scrambled eggs, coffee. . . .  
  
  
Xander's attention lands on a dull bit of metal, and is transfixed. . . .  
  
  
“ _Do it_ ,” a voice growls, and he can't tell if its Spike's or his own, but--  
  
  
It's not Spike's hands that wind up covered in blood.  
  


*

  
  
He really had no idea it would feel like  _this_. That's he'd be . . .  _empty_ , again.  
  
  
That  _nothing_  can, in fact,  _hurt_.  
  
  
“You're gonna live a long time, mate. You'll undoubtedly feel worse than this.  _Do_  worse than . . . death-by-butterknife,” Spike says, dark-voiced and amused from the shadows of the doorway.  
  
  
The body in his arms hasn't stirred, but Xander can't stop holding it. Has, at last, an inkling of how awful Adam must've felt that night. How horribly justified.  
  
  
“Oh, stop whinging.” Spike's dismissive tone isn't exactly comforting. “It's an important object lesson: if you can kill what you love, you can kill  _anyone_.”  
  
  
It's weird how something that made perfect sense an hour ago? Is now insane troll-logic.  
  
  
“It's not like he'll be dead for long! If you're to survive, you have to know just what you're capable of.”  
  
  
Cold-blooded murder?  
  
  
Spike scoffs. “Mortal value judgments like that'll only drive you crazy . . . er. You're  _Im_ mortal. Start thinking like--”   
  
  
“Spike.” He feels that curious, lifeless gaze on him, but can't open his eye to meet it. Even if he could, the last thing he wants to see is Casper the Machiavellian Ghost. “Go. And don't come back, okay?”  
  
  
Xander can hear that knowing, fucking  _smirk_. It's sheer willpower that keeps his back to the ghost, the imaginary frienemy, the-- _what_ ever.   
  
  
“Guess my services are no longer required, then?” Spike sounds closer, but Xander doesn't open his eye. Ignores the sigh, and the ice-cold fingers combing through his hair. “Love him with your whole heart, if you've the bollocks--if you  _dare_. But always remember, mate: there can be only One.”  
  
  
Xander's head whips up, but Spike is gone, and . . . Adam is starting to gasp.  
  



	8. The Student

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the slashthedrabble prompt “promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: “A”, was an Apple Pie. . . .  
> Note: Part of the Immortal!verse. Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen", as well as a few days past "Conversations With Dead People: Redux". Vague spoilers for BtVS. AU for Highlander.

“One month.  _Promise me,_  Adam,” The boy's voice is taut with suppressed hysteria.   
  
  
Methos nods solemnly. “One month.  _If_ \--” here, at least, he's honest. Gives the boy a pointed look. “If Duncan is satisfied with your progress.”  
  
  
“Can't I just learn from you?” The boy pleads softly. “If there's anything  _you_  don't know about swordplay, it's probably not worth knowing.”  
  
  
Methos lets go of the boy, and steps back. “You need a tutor, my love, and that tutor can't be me.”  
  
  
“Is this because I--” the boy glances over his shoulder at me--he's stopped wearing his eye-patch since last we met--before meeting Methos's eyes again. “Is this because of the butterknife?”  
  
  
Methos almost smiles, though it's a bit rueful. “Yes, and no. Yes, in that I'm still angry, and anger's not a very good place to start an apprenticeship from—at least not for the mentor. And no, because . . . I can't be your lover and your tutor, Xander. Since I'm a selfish old bastard, I'll choose the former, and leave the latter to someone who can actually equip you to play the Game.”  
  
  
“No.” The boy pushes his hands through messy dark hair. Takes a plaintive step toward Methos, who takes a matching step back. “I want--”  
  
  
“--to die prematurely?” Methos shakes his head gravely. “Let me tell you what I see, love. You're a man who's been on a starvation diet for months—when he eats at all—and as a consequence, you're skin and bones. You're strangely uncoordinated, unless wielding a butterknife and the element of surprise. You're currently at the brink of physical and mental collapse, despite sleeping almost 'round the clock, most days.  
  
  
“So what you want is irrelevant. What you  _need_  is someone who can spend eighteen hours a day for the next three months rebuilding you from the ground up--before he spends eighteen hours a day training you in actual swordplay.”  
  
  
All delivered in that matter-of-fact, conversational tone Methos has had thousands of years to practice. And this boy, this  _Xander_ , isn't immune to it. Wilts under that quiet, objective assessment.  
  
  
“Fine.” He grins mirthlessly, busies himself with gathering his duffel bag then shoulders past Methos. “Whatever. If you're going, go.”  
  
  
“Xander.”  
  
  
He hesitates, listing enough to one side that Methos very obviously, and only just restrains himself from reaching out. “I  _will_  miss you.”  
  
  
Some of the tension flows out of the boy. He doesn't turn around, but the defeated hunch of his shoulders squares out. “One month. You promised.”  
  
  
“That, I did.” Another wry, almost-smile, and Methos is gone, leaving me to teach an ignorant, angry boy with a broken-glass grin and fresh blood on his hands. I sigh, and gesture him into the dojo.  
  
  
“A butterknife, eh?”  
  
  
With a graceless motion that's more a nervous tic than a shrug, he strides by. “Sue me. I did the best I could with the tools available.”  
  
  
Well . . . at least he's not  _completely_  hopeless.


	9. Falling Correctly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In between ass-kickings, Xander does some growing up. Written for prompt #163: “Bad Idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen". A follow-up to "The Student."

“This . . . is a not-good idea.”   
  
  
Xander laboriously picks himself up off the mat. Again.  
  
  
“Oh? Why is that?” MacLeod obviously couldn't care less about his opinion, and that makes Xander want to express it more. And with fists.  
  
  
“Well, you treat my boyfriend like crap. You order me around like I'm a retarded stepchild. Then there's the whole mutual antipathy we've got going on . . . let's face it: I'm not gonna learn jack from you.”  
  
  
Brooding, Angel-esque brows raise over coolly assessing eyes. “Hmm. Not liking me is a very good reason to refuse instruction on how to keep your head.”  
  
  
 _When you put it that way. . . ._  
  
  
“I wanna learn.” Xander assumes the Ready stance, yet again. MacLeod mirrors him patiently. “I  _will_  learn. I just don't think you're the one to teach me.”  
  
  
“There isn't a long line of Immortals waiting to train you to someday best them in single combat.”  
  
  
“Given.” He rushes MacLeod again--only to be hurled to the mat. Again. Sunlight-kaleidoscopes spin across his vision before he squinches his eye shut. Everything  _aches_  from hours and days of nothing but  _this_. “Adam. I could be learning this from Adam.”  
  
  
“He's far too in love with you. He'd coddle you into uselessness.”  
  
  
“I disagree.”  
  
  
“With which part?”  
  
  
God, Xander just wants to slug him. But the last time he tried that, he wound up on the mat for three hours, listening to MacLeod putter around his dojo while he waited for his broken arms to heal.  
  
  
Sans painkillers.  
  
  
“There's so much you need to learn . . . the Old Man wouldn't even know where to begin with you.” When Xander warily opens his eye, the kaleidoscope is mostly gone, and MacLeod is looming over him. His saturnine features are grimly unreadable, as always. “If you don't trust my word, I suggest you trust his. He hasn't the patience to teach you proper table manners, let alone proper swordplay.”  
  
  
“Seriously, I'm warning you--”  
  
  
“That you'll do what, exactly? Talk me to death?” MacLeod kneels. The  _Quickening_  crackles between them like lightning, elemental and vital. “Do you know how many heads he's had to take in the last year, all to protect you?”  
  
  
Xander turns his face away guiltily. He'd wondered, but hadn't the courage to ask. Because how do you approach something like that?   
  
  
How do you  _repay_  it?  
  
  
 _By learning, kid,_  his better angel whispers. It's started to sound like, of all people, Joe Dawson.  _As much as you can, whenever you can. From whoever's offering._  
  
  
Sighing, he takes the hand MacLeod is holding out, and is pulled quickly to his feet. Both combatants pace to their respective sides of the mat. They bow shallowly--sardonically, in one case.  
  
  
“So when do I get to spar?” Xander assumes the Ready stance. But rather than mirroring, MacLeod rushes him. Before he realizes it, he's on his back again, aching and gasping, watching the sunlit air shake and shudder itself to pieces.  
  
  
“When you learn to fall correctly.”


	10. The Dao of Methos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the slashtheimage prompt# 001. A head is lost, a way is found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Part of the Immortal!verse, set six months after "The Correct Way To Fall." Spoilers for S1 of “Highlander: The Raven”, S2 of Highlander, and S7 of BtVS.

Methos dashes into the front hallway of Amanda's townhouse and sees a full-length woolen duster much like his own--a first Christmas gift to Xander that'd been  _very_  well received--hanging on the old fashioned coat-rack.  
  
  
All he can do for long moments is stare at it, until the scents of blood, gunpowder, and ozone rear their ugly heads from under the pungent aroma of burning pot roast and over-cooked starch.  
  
  
Shaking off his shock, he draws the Ivanhoe and stalks quickly, stealthily down the hall--knowing he won't have the element of surprise in a house currently boasting an Immortal signature besides his own, but knowing he also daren't call for Amanda, or Detective Wolf.  
  
  
Or Xander . . . who lately seems to wind up wherever the good detective is. . . .   
  
  
Instinct and his nose lead him past dining room and salon, into the kitchen at the back of the house. As he passes the stove, he shuts it off. If Amanda's still in the Game, the last thing she'll want to see is her house burned down.   
  
  
Then he's at the narrow cellar door, and the narrower, brief stair that leads down into silent semi-darkness. An oily sweat springs up all over him as he starts carefully downward, wondering on each mute step if it's Xander's blood he's smelling, or Xander's severed head he'll find. . . .  
  
  
Halfway to bottom he can make out a body--slender, clothed in black, neck and right arm bent at odd, gruesome angles. Fine, fox-like features, and bright shock of platinum hair--  
  
  
Amanda. Dead, but with her head still on her shoulders. And not about to lose it, if Methos has his say. MacLeod's lost quite enough without losing her. More than he already has, that is.  
  
  
Speaking of, not too far beyond her, lays a squarely handsome man who bears a superficial resemblance to MacLeod. His body is seemingly whole, until one notices the sluggishly droozling bullet wounds in his chest--likely from his own gun.  
  
  
Detective Nicholas Wolf, Amanda's latest student--as sarcastic, bitter, and resentful as Xander once was, and sometimes still is . . . but for much longer--and who, in the five years Methos has been acquainted with him, hasn't spared him, or MacLeod a friendly word or glance. Or even Amanda, really.  
  
  
He does, however, have many words and glances, friendly and moreso, for Xander, who almost blooms in the face of Wolf's not-quite-brotherly overtures.  
  
  
If Amanda's at all jealous, she's hiding it at least as well as Methos does.  
  
  
Not that it matters. All of these extraneous asides do nothing but postpone the moment he notices the headless corpse in a darkened corner of the cellar, amidst tumbled boxes and paintings. Postpone the moment the pit drops out of Methos's stomach, the bottom out of the entire world, and everything just  _stops_.  
  
  
At the feet of the corpse is a bloody, familiar sword--a very recent gift from Methos, upon learning that Xander has-- _had_  a natural aptitude for Wu Shu Kwan. A gift that'd made Xander's eye widen with something like surprised pleasure, as it hadn't in far too long.  
  
  
 _”I . . . I don't even know how to use it, or what kind of sword it is,” he'd murmured, unable to look away from it, his hand curved possessively around hilt and stroking the blade.  
  
  
Six months without so much as kissing Xander--not to mention all the strained months before the Butterknife Incident--and imagining Xander holding, wielding, or posing with any number of broadswords had become something between a persistent wank fantasy and an unhealthy obsession for Methos.  
  
  
The reality, however, is infinitely more potent. Even after watching Xander and MacLeod spar, it'd been strange and almost painfully arousing to see Xander so at home in the dojo, barefoot, shirtless, and competent. Graceful. It's like he's become more himself, and someone else at the same time, and Methos is helpless to admit that he's quite lost his heart to them both.  
  
  
“It's a Chinese broadsword. A [liuye dao](http://www.chaotek.com/public/swords/hanwei%20liuyedao/liuyedao.jpg): willow leaf sabre,” Methos had said, a nervous, churning feeling in his stomach. He'd felt like an anxious prom date proffering an expensive, but iffy corsage. The five other times he'd driven up to Seacouver to see Xander had been . . . extremely awkward. Verging on disastrous--and even MacLeod had taken to offering him stoic, well-intentioned advice on his love life.   
  
  
“_Liuye dao _,” Xander had said wonderingly, and his accent was atrocious, but the look on his face--the look of a man finding something he's been missing all his life--more than made up for it. “Mac's been training me on a_ bokken _, but he won't let me near an edged weapon yet. Says I'm as likely to take off my own head, as his.”  
  
  
“Well. Far be it from me to agree with MacLeod, but. . . .”  
  
  
“Bite me.” Xander had stepped back a few paces, into a ready stance, and waved the sword experimentally. Adopted a basic fighting form: _bow. Block. Parry. Thrust. Slice. Block. Bow. _The look on Xander's face during this display ranges from revelation to a startlingly fierce love.  
  
  
“_Cool _,” he'd breathed, nearly glowing with happiness. He is_ beautiful _. Despite the havoc the past year has wreaked, Xander's still so damned beautiful--the light that seems to shine from with him is changed, but untarnished, and brighter than ever.  
  
  
That churning feeling in Methos's stomach floats upward, to settle somewhere near his heart, where it grows teeth.  
  
  
“MacLeod was making noises about trying you on a _claidheamh mòr _, or one of the Oakeshott typologies. Now, I may not be your mentor, but even I knew this would be a much better fit.” It was strange to be able to talk swords with Xander. Strange and wonderful and somewhat melancholy. “It's solid, powerful, excellent for a close-quarters fight. Good for thrusting, and chopping. One of the best weapons to come out of the Song Dynasty.”  
  
  
Xander grins briefly, before meeting Methos's gaze. “Thank you, she's . . . _perfect _. How old is she?”  
  
  
_ She _? Methos thinks, then smiles a little. “Older than MacLeod, but not as old as me.”  
  
  
Xander rolled his eye, but that grin was peeking out again. Had turned into something frank and appraising. Wanting, Methos dared to hope, and his hope wasn't misplaced.  
  
  
That night, they'd made love for the first time since just before the Butterknife Incident, and in spite of Xander's increasing chumminess with the good detective. The next morning, however, Methos woke up smiling, only to find Xander watching him as if he was an unwelcome stranger.  
  
  
Both the day and their moods had only gone south, from there, and the visit was cut short by the expedient of Methos walking out in the middle of a Cold War-esque, non-argument during breakfast. . . ._  
  
  
At five thousand plus years old, Methos is far too old to crumple and weep when a lover dies. He supposes, with a detachment born of rage as clear and cold as a Midwinter day, that once he's avenged Xander that he'll mourn for a decade . . . likely two, in this case, but eventually move on.  
  
  
As he always does. Even when it feels as if the still-beating heart's been ripped from him.  
  
  
Such is the Dao of Methos. The Dao of the Sword.  
  
  
But for now, the one responsible for the pain he refuses to feel is still here, kneeling next to Xander's body, her own soon to be removed head bowed, an ancient-looking  _tulwar_  falling out of one hand. The other hand is covering her mouth.  
  
  
Tamas Wardeep: neither old, nor strong, nor cunning, yet she'd somehow got the drop on Amanda, who's all three. And Detective Wolf, who's . . . well, strong, anyway. Why she chose to begin and end her ambush with Xander's head is a mystery, one Methos really couldn't care less about.  
  
  
Whatever her reasons or motivations, she'll die tonight.  
  
  
Methos strides noiselessly across the cellar. Across concrete that's smudged with burns from confined and repeated lighting strikes--with Xander's  _Quickening_. There are tears running down his face, and all he can hear is the terrible, reliable thud of a heart that's been beating for thousands of years too long.  
  
  
An expanse of pale neck is bared as she holds her penitent's pose . . . she must know he's here, that she's about to lose her head, but she doesn't move to defend herself, doesn't acknowledge him at all. That makes it easier, not harder, to raise the Ivanhoe, and grit out,  _there can be only One!_  as he sweeps downward with the Ivanhoe.  
  
  
“The stone stairs,” Tamas says in Xander's voice, and the Ivanhoe halts millimeters from the pale--far too pale, actually--neck, and Methos is suddenly noticing other things, too. That Tamas is rather too large, too-broad-shouldered, and that the headless body is nearly a foot too short and far too slight.  
  
  
He throws the Ivanhoe from himself as if burned, starting from the clatter as it, and he fall to floor.  
  
  
“Xander?” He's kneeling in a small puddle of still-warm blood that is not, after all, Xander's. He wants to ask a thousand questions, not the least of which is:  _how are you still alive? Somehow, she beat Wolf, and she beat Amanda--how did she not beat you?_  
  
  
But more than that, he wants to drag Xander out of the shadows . . . out of this cellar, and cover his face in kisses, to apologize for the last visit, even though he still doesn't know what he did wrong--and he suspects Xander doesn't know, either. But none of that matters, anymore.  
  
  
“Xander, love, look at me,” Methos says, reaching out to lay his hand on one slumped shoulder, but hesitating at the last second. “What happened here? Are you alright?”  
  
  
“He was waiting for me at the top, smiling, and I knew. I knew that I'd marry him. My beautiful Durjaya . . . nothing could stop us from being together . . . .” Xander trails of uncertainly . . . and in perfect, Bombay Gujarati. “We walked down our Temple stair as man and w-w-if-fe--” the last word ends in a hitching, uncertain stutter, and Methos, so relieved as to be utterly boneless, laughs uncomfortably.  
  
  
“My love,” he starts, meaning to add  _that's not you, it's--it's_ her _. These aren't your memories._ But before he can, Xander's hand has closed on the  _tulwar_ , swinging it in a perfect, elegant arc that ends in a cold kiss at Methos's neck.  
  
  
At last, Xander's face turns to him, fiercely glittering dark eye-- _eyes_? For a moment, Methos could swear there are two dark eyes watching him with trembling malice--shining in a sea of shadows, along with a flash of white teeth. Methos instinctively holds his breath, wondering if it'll be his last.  
  
  
“They threw rose petals as we came down the stair. And Laksmi smiled on our union. Until  _he_. Ruined.  _Everything_.” The dark, dark gaze flicks over Methos's shoulder, at Detective Wolf's prone body. “I will take  _her_  Quickening, just as my husband's was taken, and he will know the pain of eternity without the one person who makes it worth living.”  
  
  
The  _tulwar_  presses in, and thin skin parts stingingly, a thin rill of blood escaping down into Methos's collar. Xander's gaze--no,  _Tamas_ 's gaze still rests on Amanda with a manic sort of blood lust Methos knows all too well.  
  
  
“Xander, listen to me,” he begins softly. He's seen new Immortals get lost in their first Quickening. He's seen not-so-new Immortals get lost in a particularly “dark” Quickening. Seen firsthand the miserable wreck that's left behind when a good man succumbs to an unfamiliar darkness.  
  
  
And with Amanda's age and power reinforcing it, Xander might never be able to find his way out from under the weight of Tamas's Quickening. From under that yearning for blood lust and vengeance.  
  
  
When Methos's hand settles on his shoulder, Xander flinches, and the sword wavers just a bit. “This isn't you, love, it's  _her_. And all she is now is a few bitter memories and failed vengeance.”  
  
  
Xander's eye at last focuses on him, though not with any real comprehension. The malice is leaching away and leaving starry-eyed confusion behind. “He has to pay for what he did . . . that's all she has left, now.”  
  
  
“That's all she has because she let vengeance rule and ruin her.” Methos addresses himself to Tamas's Quickening, meets the dark light in Xander's eye until that light is gone. Till all he sees in Xander's gaze is a broken heart. “She lost someone that she loved, and that's tragic, but it doesn't mean she gets to have another go, or that you should let her. Her time is over, her path is not your path.”  
  
  
Methos is quite aware of the irony of himself, of all Immortals, cautioning against vengeance. But he's knows Xander better than Xander does and, Tamas's Quickening aside, Xander doesn't have it in him to live a vengeance-fueled life. And Methos hopes he never does.  
  
  
“We w-walked down the Temple stairs and they threw rose p-petals, Adam,” he whimpers softly--in English this time--his breath coming too fast, too shallowly. The sword slides down Methos's chest, parting coat, sweater and skin, deep enough to make him bleed. He feels the pain of it distantly as Xander lists forward, sweat-damp hair clinging to his neck and the sides of his face. His body is a series of tremors and tics. “We were supposed to have forever. It wasn't supposed to end.”  
  
  
“It didn't end, Xander. Not for  _you_. I'm here, and I love you.” Methos gently pries the  _tulwar_ from Xander's ice-cold, unresisting hand. Tosses it away, then takes the hand in his own and kisses it. Tugs Xander closer--holds him tight when panic-strong arms wrap around him, clammy hands clutching him as if to hold him  _here_.  
  
  
“ _I_ 'm the real one, right?” His face is damp and too hot on Methos's neck, a stark contrast to his hands. He feels like a man in the grips of a fever that may be about to break, or may be about to kill him. “I  _think_  I'm the real one, but . . . she  _burns_  like the sun, and I'm evaporating. She's so loud and so  _angry_. She's a million bees in my head and a knife in my heart and poison in my blood and it all  _burns_ , and I can't make her shut up-- _please, make her shut up_ \--”  
  
  
Methos shakes Xander once, good and hard, fingers digging into lean muscles that had--as Methos'd predicted--taken months of intensive work to rebuild. But Xander's sturdy frame is still too too sparsely covered.  
  
  
“You're stronger than this, Xander. Stronger than  _her_.” When Xander shakes his head no, and tries to cower in Methos's arms again, Methos gives him another shake. This time, Xander glares at him, and the darkness in his gaze is all his own. “You have to  _fight_  her, just like you did before. Nothing less than your sanity is at stake. If you give in to her, it really will be over. You'll be  _gone_  . . . to a place where neither MacLeod, nor I can reach you, or help you. Do you understand?”  
  
  
“ _No_!” Xander growls, and tries to pull away from him, but he's hardly in any shape to.  
  
  
Methos drags them both to their feet and turns Xander to face Tamas's body, ignoring the flinch, and brief struggle to free himself, to get away. “Tamas is dead, and still she's fighting for her life. To usurp  _your_  life. You have to fight just as hard--harder, or she'll win!”  
  
  
For a long time, Xander doesn't say anything, doesn't struggle, just stands there, letting Methos hold him. He smells of some herbal soap, of metal and blood. Methos suddenly, powerfully _wants_  him. Right here, right now, with the body of their enemy cooling mere feet away and their allies surely only minutes away from resurrection. . . .  
  
  
“Xander,” he breathes into the damp hair behind Xander's ear, his lips brushing the lobe. His embrace changes from restraining to amorous, and Xander suffers the change for a few moments before sighing and trying to put some space between them.  
  
  
“I understand,” he says in a hoarse, tired, firm voice. "Let me go."  
  
  
So Methos lets him go, though it's the hardest thing he can ever remember doing.  
  
  
Xander shuffles toward Tamas's body, and stares down at it, before bending down to pick up his bloody sword. He straightens, hefting it thoughtfully.  
  
  
“ _I_ 'm the real one,” he tells Tamas's remains; a shaky assertion, but no less valid for that. He clutches the  _liuye dao_  with the air of a man making a promise. Points it at the body. “I'm the real one.”  
  
  
By the time the others stir--Amanda with several sickening crunches of bone that make Xander shudder ever so slightly--he's cleaning his sword with Tamas's shirt . . . with hands that don't shake, but tremor, occasionally.  
  
  
At first, they only notice Methos, and pepper him with questions he can't answer. Except for one. Detective Wolf's sudden, worried: “Where's Xander?”  
  
  
Methos grudgingly nods toward a pile of boxes far from the body, from which Xander's watching them all warily.  
  
  
He meets Amanda's surprised gaze with a stiff nod, then Detective Wolf's briefly, opaquely, before refocusing on his cleaning. Thorough as it is, Methos is certain the first two layers of steel have been polished off.  
  
  
“Xander, you're okay--” Detective Wolf says, genuine relief in his voice as he starts toward Xander. Amanda's hand on his shoulder stops him before Methos would've. And in a much kinder way, too.  
  
  
As if hearing that thought, Wolf's Atlantic-blue eyes tick to Methos. They've never been anything more than civil to each other. He finds Wolf to be rather immature, petty and erratic. And Wolf no doubt thinks Methos is a callous bastard.  
  
  
“You took care of her?” he asks, with the air of a man about to humble himself mightily, and Methos smiles blandly, mentally tsking at the man's startling inattention to details.   
  
  
“No. Xander was the one who had the dubious pleasure of cleaning up your mess . . . Detective.”  
  
  
Wolf flushes angrily, then pales. This time, even Amanda's hand isn't enough to stop him from approaching Xander, his face a study in more emotions than Methos is interested in identifying. “Jesus Christ, Xander--you saved our lives--”  
  
  
“For which we will someday surely repay you,” Amanda says graciously, glancing at Methos with a question in her eyes when Xander neatly side-steps Detective Wolf's open-armed concern. “Though I expect right now, you're ready to sleep for a day and a night.”  
  
  
Xander, standing halfway between Wolf and Methos, looks at Amanda for a long moment, then smiles wanly, and takes the proffered excuse. Drops Tamas's shirt and bows, the way he would to MacLeod. “Yeah. I am kinda tired. And I really should get back to the dojo before Mac blows a gasket.” He glances at Wolf, whose slightly lost gaze ping-pongs back and forth between the body, Methos, and Xander. "Seeya, Nick."  
  
  
Gloating satisfaction aside, Methos could empathize with the man, were he moved to. He's worn that lost expression himself for nearly a year. But instead, he moves closer to Xander, and slides an arm around his waist.   
  
  
Xander tenses, but only a little. Allows Methos to say good evening for them both, and escort him out of the cellar. Wolf and Amanda can dispose of the body, and consider it a small part of their debt repaid.  
  
  
When both Ivanhoe and  _liuye dao_  are hidden safely in their coats, they step out into the cool spring night. Xander spots MacLeod's boat of a car and starts toward it--gasping when Methos catches him around the waist and pulls him close, kissing the sweet spot just above Xander's carotid artery. He's made Xander come by kissing, licking, nibbling and nuzzling that spot alone, and wants more than anything another chance to do so.  
  
  
When he applies his teeth a little more forcefully than usual, Xander makes a breathless, needy sound low in his throat, and shivers. “Marking your territory?”  
  
  
“Only if the territory's still mine to mark,” Methos replies softly, laving the bite mark and kissing it. Xander snorts.  
  
  
“Could be,” he admits, glancing over his shoulder with another one of those infuriatingly opaque looks before continuing towards MacLeod's car. “You should probably ask me over breakfast.”  
  
  
Their last breakfast aside, Methos doesn't stop smiling all the way to the dojo.  
  
  



	11. Moments of Random Domesticity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the slashthedrabble prompt# 182, “denial”. I hear it's not just a river in Egypt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Part of the Immortal!verse, set the morning after "The Dao of Methos." Spoilers for S2 of Highlander, and S7 of BtVS.

Breakfast, on the morning after Xander's taken his first Quickening, has a distinctly occidental bent.  
  
  
Methos takes a bite of  _chole bhature_ \--spicy, crispy, and good, considering Xander's cooking skills normally don't rate 'reheating takeaway properly'--and doesn't so much as raise an eyebrow. Whatever urgings are doing their level best to rip apart Xander's mind and heart, if giving in on something as small as breakfast appeases his newest personal demon. . . .  
  
  
“Is it . . . okay?” Xander's quiet voice from his elbow, and the homey sound of hot tea being poured.  
  
  
“It's wonderful.” Methos catches Xander's wrist and pries the teapot out of his hand. Sits it on the table and tugs downward till Xander sits next to him. Damp hair curls and cues on forehead and temples. He looks simultaneously young, and brittle. “How are  _you_?”  
  
  
A dark brown eye in a sea of irritated red meets his gaze before skittering away--to the hand held loosely in Methos's. “I'm okay.”  
  
  
“You might try that once more--with feeling.” That's meant to be mildly sardonic, but it wins Methos a surprised smile. (It occurs to him, with an anticipatory thrill, that there are still so many things he doesn't know about Xander, and for the first time in a long time, he starts to feel as if he might have a chance at finding those things out.)  
  
  
“I'll suddenly remember something, like the first time I-- _she_  left Bombay, and how scared she was. And there was a steamer ship, and everything was so strange and  _big_. But Durjaya was there, so that was okay. It was. . . .” Xander closes his eye: smooth, perfect skin in stark contrast to a sunken lid surrounded by a web of faint, fine scars. “Nick and I have been-- _were_  sleeping together.”  
  
  
Methos is . . . not pleased, but also not surprised. Not angry. But he wonders what Tamas's Quickening has been making of  _those_  memories. Nothing good if the pained, absent grimace on Xander's face is anything to go by.  
  
  
He squeezes Xander's hand. “Thank you for your honesty, but you don't have to explain--”  
  
  
“I kinda do, actually.” Xander determinedly meets his gaze again. “He made me feel like I was just an ordinary mortal guy again . . . denial at its best, right?” Xander raises and lowers both hands, like scales and sighs. “I wish now that it wasn't something I need so badly . . . normality. . . .”  
  
  
At this moment, Methos feels very, very old and indescribably sad. “'Normality' isn't something I can promise you, Xander.”  
  
  
“Maybe my idea of what normality means has changed.”  
  
  
The sadness recedes, ever so slightly. “What, exactly, do you want?” He's asked this question before, and has never received more than blank looks and sullen silences.  
  
  
“Love, a home, the world . . . my long-haul guy . . . moments of random domesticity.” Xander glances at their linked hands again before whisking the teapot back to the stove.  
  
  
Methos watches him putter for a moment, then tucks into breakfast again. With renewed gusto.  
  
  
So the morning passes.


	12. Love, and the Nature of the Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They both get more than they bargained for. Written to the song prompt; ten random songs, and the duration of each song to write ten ficlets. Though I discarded the time limits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes/Warnings: Takes place immediately after "Princes of The Universe" and before "Life Is Good . . . Cue The Ominous Music."

Nirvana: Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

  
  
Xander wakes up the next morning with a  _throbbing_  headache the likes of which he’s never had before.  
  
  
It seems to be making his very blood surge in time to some vast, unknowable beat, and each tooth seems to vibrate in its pocket of gum, and he’s still wearing his patch, which doesn’t help matters.  
  
  
“Fuck,” he moans unhappily, holding his head in both his hands. On its way up to his head, his left hand brushes warm, firm flesh that’s definitely not his own, and last night comes back to him with the force and velocity of the planet Mars.  
  
  
The hot guy with the English accent and the sword. . . .  
  
  
Mild panic pushes the worst of the headache to the back of Xander’s consciousness and he opens his eyes. Looks to his left, and yep, that’d be the guy from last night. The guy Xander had decided that, hot or not, he definitely wasn’t going to be sleeping with.  
  
  
No way, no how.  
  
  
 _It’s nice to know I’m as good as my word_ , he thinks sitting up, ignoring the thud of his head and the way the room seems too bright—too sharp-edged, like a sumi-e version of itself.  
  
  
He eases himself slowly, carefully out of bed so as not to wake the sleeping catastrophe he found himself lying beside.   
  
  
The guy— _Adam_ , Xander remembers suddenly—stirs a little, turning onto his side, facing away from Xander, who allows himself a sigh of relief.  
  
  
He quickly, gingerly, stumbles around the sun-splashed, disaster area of a bedroom—there’re books in piles and stacks  _every_ where, ancient-looking knick-knacks and bric-a-brac crowding too many shelves, clothing strewn about—finding his boxers, jeans, and shirt. The socks he gives up as lost, though he thinks his shoes should be somewhere in the livingroom, along with his jacket.  
  
  
Once dressed, he takes one last look at Adam—one last moment to remember the previous night of swords, salvos, and sex, oh, ye gods, the  _sex_. Adam was not only well-hung, but he knew what to do his god-given attributes. Xander’s only amazed he’s still ambulatory after the pounding his ass has taken.  
  
  
But he’s not even sore. Not even a little.  
  
  
Strange, but not strange enough to stand around pondering it when Adam could wake up at any minute.  
  
  
Creeping quietly to the bedroom door, Xander walks away from beautiful, momentary insanity and back to his real life.  
  
  


*

  
  
When the front door closes behind Xander, Methos opens his eyes and smiles.  
  
  


Garbage: Push It

  
  
For the next few days, Xander gets that weird headache intermittently. Usually when he’s at work, though occasionally when he’s at home. Sometimes, it’s thudding and immediate. Other times, it’s distant and ignorable.  
  
  
A week to the day after The Adam Incident, while Xander’s slinging booze at the Arms, the headache ramps up to something Xander can only describe as  _ohgodnotfun_. Everything takes on those sumi-e edges, becomes too sharp, seems to be moving too slow even as Xander’s heart races. Colors are too crisp and yet washed out at the same time.  
  
  
He nearly drops a pint of Guinness as he hands it off to Joe-Roddy, who gives him a look.  
  
  
“You okay, Alex? You just looked like you got gut-punched.”  
  
  
“I’m fine, I’m just. . . .”  _in need of an MRI_. Xander leans on the bar. “I’m fine. Just got a headache.”  
  
  
Joe-Roddy’s watery blue eyes light up, and Xander’s sure there’s a smile somewhere under that ginger mustache. “If ya got pains, I got Vicodans—“  
  
  
“No, thanks.” Xander straightens up and makes a no-foul gesture. “I’ve got some acetaminophen under the bar, that oughta do the trick. But thanks,” he adds when Joe-Roddy looks crestfallen.  
  
  
But the acetaminophen is actually not a bad idea. It only barely takes the edge off this sort of headache, but any relief is better than none.  
  
  
Xander’s just poured himself a glass of water when he feels eyes on him.  
  
  
“Hello, Xander,” a voice says, and Xander would recognize it anywhere.  
  
  
He’s not really surprised that Adam is here, but nevertheless, he still drops the glass of water.  
  
  


The Clash: Death Or Glory

  
  
“We’re never doing this again,” Xander says firmly.  
  
  
“Yes. That was terrible beyond description, and certainly never to be repeated,” Adam agrees with suspicious sincerity. Suspicious, not the least of why is because if anything, the sex was even better than last time, despite the cramped confines of the backseat of Xander’s car.  
  
  
Adam watches him struggles his pants back on, himself naked from the waist down; he’s still half-hard.  
  
  
“I want to see you again,” he says softly, his dark eyes glowing in the dim light cast by the streetlights. Xander blushes and struggles to get himself zipped in without castrating himself.  
  
  
“You’ve already seen me again.”  
  
  
“Yes, and I’d like to keep seeing you.”  
  
  
“Not gonna happen.”  
  
  
“I think it will.”  
  
  
“You also think it’s perfectly normal to run around Seattle wielding a sword.”  
  
  
“Oh, I don’t think it’s  _normal_. Merely . . . necessary, on occasion.”  
  
  
Xander snorts, and feels around on the floor for Adam’s jeans, then flings them at him.  
  
  
“I gotta get back to the bar before Joe-Roddy forgets he’s keeping an eye on the place.” He opens the door, meaning to get out and give Adam some privacy and room to get dressed, but Adam catches his hand and pulls him close. Kisses him lightly, then a lot less lightly.  
  
  
“I’d like to take you to dinner.”  
  
  
“I don’t eat dinner.”  
  
  
“Then perhaps I could just take you.”  
  
  
“I . . . look, this’s been really nice, but we can’t keep doing it.”  
  
  
“Why not?”  
  
  
“Because.”  
  
  
“Well, so long as you’re not being arbitrary.” Adam looks into his eyes and smiles. “C’mon, let’s get you back to work.”  
  
  


Stone Temple Pilots: Big Empty

  
  
On the anniversary of Anya’s death, Xander finds himself knocking on Adam’s door.  
  
  
It opens before he can even wrap it good and Adam, smiling, waves him in. For a moment, Xander stands there uncertainly, thinking about how bad an idea this is. In the weeks since the car-sex, Adam’s been MIA, a fact which didn’t both Xander—except a lot—until now.  
  
  
Adam takes a good, longer look at him, and that smile slips a little.  
  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asks, taking Xander’s hand and tugging him inside. Xander slinks in, looking around. The apartment looks the same: a cluttered mess. Homey, in a if-Giles-wasn’t-such-a-neat-freak sort of way.  
  
  
It’s exactly what he needs, and some part of him had understood that—took his wandering, aimless feet here, instead of home.  
  
  
“Nothing, just . . . I need to not be alone, right now.” He avoids Adam’s gaze and makes a show of looking around. “Maybe you could get a cleaning lady.”  
  
  
“She’d only mess up my filing system,” Adam says, shrugging. “Let me take your jacket.”  
  
  


*

  
  
After dinner—which Adam whipped up in far too short a time for it to be this good—Xander sits at the kitchen counter, glass of merlot in hand, watching Adam wash dishes. He’d refused an offer of help, and truth be told, Xander was far too comfortable to make an issue of it.  
  
  
“What do you do for a living?” he asks. “Are you a librarian?”  
  
  
“One might think so.” Adam glances over his shoulder and laughs. It makes his boyish face look even younger. “I’m a professor of ancient literature.”  
  
  
Noting the aged nature of the books that crowd the apartment, Xander nods. “That makes sense. What kinda ancient literature?”  
  
  
“Hmm. Mostly Sumerian, Akkadian, Mesopatamian.”  
  
  
“Can you actually read those languages?”  
  
  
“Read, speak, talk dirty in.” Another glance, this one a bit more heated than the last. “Languages are my hobby.”  
  
  
“How many do you speak?”  
  
  
“Honestly? I’ve lost count.”  
  
  
Xander, who speaks Spanish pretty well, and French almost as well, can’t imagine knowing yet another language. Where would one find the brain-space to learn it? Even if immersed in the culture?  
  
  
“So, how’d you learn so many languages?”  
  
  
Another laugh. “Call it a misspent youth.”  
  
  
Xander, who misspent his youth killing monsters and blowing up high schools, thinks there could be worse way to spend one’s youth than, oh, actually learning.  
  
  
He finishes his wine and Adam finishes the dishes in silence. When he turns to Xander smiling, Xander returns it.  
  
  
“I tell a very good bedtime story,” Adam says finally, and Xander snorts.  
  
  
“Assuming I stay, what bedtime story would you tell me?”  
  
  
“Hmm . . . I’m thinking you look like an  _The Epic of Gilgamesh_  sort.”  
  
  
“Oh, do I?” Xander has no idea who Gilgamesh was. It sounds like one of the elves from  _Lord of The Rings._ “What’s this epic about?”  
  
  
Adam drifts over to the counter and leans against it, next to Xander, who shivers at his nearness. Adam reaches out to brush Xander’s hair off his forehead. His fingers graze the strap of the eyepatch and Xander shudders, this time, turning his face away.  
  
  
“Was it bad?” Adam asks quietly.  
  
  
“Pretty bad. I’d rather not talk about it.”  
  
  
Adam nods and bites his lip, watching Xander for a while, as if sizing him up. When he speaks, his voice is low and almost sonorous: the tones of a born storyteller.  
  
  
“Listen, now, and I will tell you  _The Epic of Gilgamesh_ , a hero who also happens to be a king. One the gods are not particularly fond of. And in their never-ending animus, they create a man named Enkidu to be his adversary. Instead, Gilgamesh and Enkidu wind up constant companions, battling evil together and questing for eternal life. . . .”  
  
  


Everclear: Everything To Everyone

  
  
The annoying buzz of Xander’s phone wakes him up the next morning.  
  
  
Adam’s not in bed with him, but there’s a note in tiny, crabbed print:  
  
  
 **Gone to get breakfast. Don’t get out of bed.**  
  
  
Smiling, Xander places the note on Adam’s pillow and fumbles around on the floor next to the bed for his jeans, and the phone.  
  
  
“Home of the Whopper, what’s your beef?”  
  
  
“Xander?” It’s Willow’s worried voice on the other end, and Xander winces. “I tried calling you yesterday evening and you didn’t pick up . . . are you okay?”  
  
  
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” Xander asks just as he hears a key in the lock. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s got a low-grade headache already, though mostly from wearing his patch all night. “Look, Wills—“  
  
  
“You don’t have to pretend you’re okay if you’re not. Not with me. I know you loved Anya, and—“  
  
  
“Wills—now’s not a good time for this. I mean, thank you for worrying, but I can’t do this right now, okay? I promise I’m not . . . that I’m okay, considering. But I just can’t do this right now, alright?”  
  
  
“What? Why? Is something wrong?”  
  
  
“No, I’m just—I’ve got stuff going on, but I promise I’ll call you later, okay? And we can talk then.”  
  
  
The bedroom door opens, but Xander doesn’t look. Tries his best to get Willow off the phone as quickly as possible, without revealing to her, or to Adam what’s really going on.  
  
  
It takes another two minutes, but Willow’s saying good-bye, after having dragged another promise out of him to call later.  
  
  
He ends call and opens his eye. Adam’s leaning against the lintel, holding two bags that are just starting to grease up. He looks curious, like a man about to ask  _what the hell?_. He even opens his mouth to ask, then clearly switches tracks. “I hope you’re hungry. I bought quite a lot.”  
  
  
Xander grins, relieved, and drops his phone on his jeans and sits up. Doesn’t miss the way Adam’s eyes sweep warmly over his body. That once over is more than enough to turn Xander’s morning wood into a mighty oak.  
  
  
 _Wow, I’m not good with metaphors at all,_  Xander thinks. Then he crooks his finger at Adam, who smirks.  
  
  
“You know, this’d be the point where I’d say something witty and cool about rather eating you, than breakfast, but I’m neither witty nor cool enough to pull off that kinda line, so I’ll just bluntly say: get over here, and fuck me.”  
  
  
“That’s a fine case to be made for bluntness,” Adam says, putting breakfast on the dresser and shrugging out of his baggy grey sweater.  
  
  


The Ramones: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

  
  
Methos stands outside of Xander’s door, unaccountably nervous.  
  
  
He means to knock straight away so they can get to the wining and dining—Xander has, at last, invited him over—under way. But for some reason he can’t seem to get beyond the feeling that he’s a hopeful suitor come to pay his love a visit that may decide their future.  
  
  
Not that they  _have_  a future. At least not together. As he’d learned some time ago, from Byron, two immortals can’t be immortal  _together_.  
  
  
And yet . . . he finds himself wishing otherwise.   
  
  
But even if two immortals could make a go of it, at least for a lifetime or two, that would mean telling Xander that he is, in fact, immortal. That’s an eventuality Methos is finding it harder and harder to contemplate. Immortality strikes different people differently, and Xander is so very _human_ , so very immediate in his passions and joys that Methos has a difficult time imagining he’ll take the possibility of living forever well.  
  
  
And he certainly won’t love Methos for springing the surprise on him. Not that Methos wants or needs Xander’s love, or even approval. But they’d be nice things to have for however long he can keep them. Which, he’s thinking, provided certain  _events_  don’t necessitate giving Xander a crash course in his immortality, could be for some time, indeed.  
  
  
It’s not love, not yet, but it could be. Despite Cassandra, despite Byron, despite Alexa, Methos finds that he wants it to be.   
  
  
 _MacLeod would tell me I’m being a fool, losing my head over a child,_  Methos thinks wryly, knowing that once upon a time, MacLeod would certainly have said the opposite. Maybe if his Tessa were still alive (or if he had any hope of taming Amanda into staying with him long enough to fall in love).  
  
  
But regardless of what Mac might say or think, regardless of the fact that Joe would almost surely give Methos a thumbs up, they’re not here now to give their mostly unsolicited advice. Methos is on his own and flying by the seat of his pants.  
  
  
So for now, he simply stands there conflicted, holding a blood-red rose, and a bottle of wine older than Xander is, as he has done for the past fifteen minutes.  
  
  
Suddenly, the door opens, and there’s Xander, wearing a flattering grey shirt and black, fitted slacks that no doubt make him amazing arse look even better.  
  
  
Methos swallows, his throat gone quite dry. “Hullo.”  
  
  
“Hi. I had a feeling you were out here,” Xander says, smiling and blushing.  
  
  
“Oh, did you? You look divine, by the way,” Methos adds, managing to sound far more confident than he actually feels. He offers Xander the rose and the wine, and Xander takes them, blushing more.  
  
  
“I’m not a girl, you know,” he mutters, but he takes the wine and sniffs the rose, seeming pleased.  
  
  
“Oh, I know you’re not a girl. I know this very well.”  
  
  
Xander’s eye meets his and they stand there, staring at each other for a long time.  
  
  
“Okay,” Xander says, laughing a little. “Okay, we’re not gonna have sex on my doorstep. We’re gonna go inside and have dinner like civilized people.”  
  
  
“And then we’ll have sex on your doorstep?” Methos makes a ridiculous innocent-face, and Xander snorts, turning to go into his apartment without an actual invitation to Methos, but leaving him to follow as he wills.  
  
  
And Methos wills. He wills very much.  
  
  
“We’ll see. It depends on how good this wine is.”  
  
  


Green Day I: Holiday

  
  
It’s not long before some immortal shows up looking to collect heads.  
  
  
He’s not terribly bright, this Judson Cole, but he knows enough to be very wary, indeed, of an immortal with Methos’s powerful quickening. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know to stay clear of Xander, too.   
  
  
“If you won’t take the boy, I will,” Cole says as they stand outside of Xander’s apartment building, swords drawn. It’s three a.m. on a miserable, drizzling night, and there’s no one around to see two men about to square off with greatswords.  
  
  
“The hell you will, Cole. Leave town now, and never come back, or I promise, you won’t live to regret it.” Methos flourishes his sword just to see the fear in Cole’s eyes.  
  
  
It’s a sweet feeling that’s soured after years of seeing it, but in this case, at least it means the idiot may just save Methos the trouble of relieving him of his head.  
  
  
No such luck, because Cole grins. “You can’t protect him forever, Pierson. One day you’ll turn your back and he’ll be mine.”  
  
  
“Not if I kill you first.”  
  
  
That fearful look comes back, but it’s soon trumped by Cole’s greed.  
  
  
 _Two heads for the price of one,_  is what every breath, every twitch of his body telegraphs to Methos.  
  
  
Bored already, he decides to make it quick. Xander’s waiting.  
  
  


**Green Day II: Boulevard Of Broken Dreams**

  
  
  
Later that night, unable to fall asleep despite being tired and having a safe, warm Xander in his arms, Methos lay there in bed, his face buried in Xander’s hair, watching another man’s life play itself on the screen of his mind.  
  
  
Judson Cole wasn’t a terribly good person, but he’d had his share of losses, more than his share of strife. And right now, there’s a woman named Moll waiting for him in Renton. Moll loves him, a thing Judson Cole hadn’t been overly used to in his relatively short life.  
  
  
But Moll, sweet, innocent, kind Moll loved him, and Judson, hard-case though he was, had begun to realize how much he loved her, too. How much he  _needed_  her—how much they needed each other.  
  
  
Judson Cole will never see her again.  
  
  
 _We either lose the ones we love, or worse: they lose us,_  a voice that sounds like Mac whispers over and under the fresh memories of a dead man.  _This is why we walk alone. We were made to be so. We can never fully trust that another immortal won’t turn on us, and mortals . . . have a nasty way of not living for nearly long enough. This boy, in his ignorance—in the ignorance you make certain to keep him in—is both. When you finally tell him who and what he is, what you are, he will turn on you for your betrayal. Or will you leave him in dangerous ignorance till some immortal gets lucky?_  
  
  
Methos holds Xander closer, and tries his best to go to sleep. To not think about tomorrow. Or about Moll who, even now, waits for a man who’ll never come home to her.  
  
  


Matthew Sweet: Come To Love

  
  
Six months into the impromptu dance that is their relationship, sometimes Methos catches Xander looking him as one unpleasantly baffled and trying to figure something out.  
  
  
Sometimes, he thinks Xander’s sussed that  _something_  out, but that can’t be the case. Even if Xander were able to put the clues he’s been given together, they still wouldn’t add up to _something_  he could even conceive, let alone believe.  
  
  
But still, there’s a slight chance. . . .  
  
  
“What?” Methos always asks, but Xander shakes his head, blushing, and changes the subject:  
  
  
“Nothing, just wondering where you wanna go for dinner, tonight.”  
  
  
“Nothing, just thinking about which movie we should see later.”  
  
  
“Nothing, just letting my mind wander a little.”  
  
  
After a few weeks of this, one rainy Sunday morning, while he washes their brunch dishes, he can feel that curious gaze on him yet again. He tolerates it till the dishes are done and every hair on the back of his neck is standing on end.   
  
  
“What?” Methos snaps, turning to face Xander, who quickly looks back down at the Sunday paper on the counter. He’s not wearing his patch, and his scarred, sunken lid makes him look defenseless and young. Methos hates that he looks so vulnerable. Hates that he knows he can’t protect Xander from the horrible things that that have already happened to him, never mind the horrible things that will happen in the future.  
  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
  
No attempt to change the subject, just Xander going back to reading the paper, his eye squinting a little as he reads. The fact that he seems to be reading the same patch of paper repeatedly doesn’t fool Methos one bit.  
  
  
“Xander. Enough is enough. Tell me, now, why you keep staring at me like I have two heads.”  
  
  
No response, till Methos is about to turn whatever’s been between them for the past month into an issue.  
  
  
“Sorry, I was just—” Xander sighs like a man who’s been defeated and has to admit it to his worst adversary. When he glances up at Methos again, he looks even more vulnerable than he had moments ago. “I was just wondering when, exactly, I fell in love with you. I can’t really pinpoint it, and it’s driving me nuts trying.”  
  
  
Methos gapes, and Xander looks back down at the paper. “Hey, wanna go to the Center On Contemporary Art this afternoon? They’ve got a whole exhibition on postmodernism, and I know you’re into that sort of thing. They’ve even got a few pieces by Julian Schnabel, your postmodern flavor of the month.”  
  
  
“You, ah—“ Methos clears his throat and ignores the silly way his heart is drumming in his chest. “You know who my postmodern flavor of the month is?”  
  
  
“How could I not?” Xander glances up at him again and half smiles. “Just like you know my flavor of the month author is—”  
  
  
“Frank Herbert.” Methos says immediately, and Xander’s eye goes back to the paper. That half-smile turns into a grin.  
  
  
“Well. I’m glad we’ve got that settled, then.”  
  
  
“Indeed.” Methos walks around the counter and stands behind Xander, hugging his shoulders. Reads the funny pages with him for awhile before kissing the crown of his head. “What do you say to moving in with me?”  
  
  
“I say between the two of us, we’re definitely going to have to get a cleaning lady.”  
  
  


The Ramones: I Don’t Care (Demo)

  
  
She’s even younger than the last fool who came to town for Xander’s head, but she’s ten times the fighter.  
  
  
Margaret Brayce is still no match for Methos, who finishes her in slightly more time than he’d finished Matthias Wright. She falters at a crucial moment, falls to her knees and Methos’s Ivanhoe kisses her neck.  
  
  
There’s hope in Brayce’s eyes, but resignation, too. She knows she’s not fast enough or good enough to save herself, and she knows that Methos knows.  
  
  
This knowing strings out between them for an eternal moment, during which she doesn’t beg, and during which Methos doesn’t give her any quarter.  
  
  
Then he swings on her.  
  
  
 _“There can be only one.”_  
  
  


*

  
  
When he slides into bed later that night, Xander stirs a little, sighing.  
  
  
“What time is it?” he asks in a sleep-fogged voice. Methos kisses his temple.  
  
  
“Almost four a.m.”  
  
  
“Where were you?” No accusation in Xander’s voice, just concern. “Everythin’ okay?”  
  
  
“Fine, fine. I just had last minute papers to grade and I fell asleep in my office. Sorry.”  
  
  
“Nothin’ to be sorry for, baby.” Xander turns to face him and smiles sleepily when Methos kisses him. “You work too hard.”  
  
  
They kiss again, and it quickly becomes less sleepy, till Methos has Xander pinned to the bed and bucking up against him.  
  
  
Despite the urgency, when they make love it’s slow and gentle, and exactly what Methos needs. Xander’s always been very good at giving him what he needs, when he needs it.  
  
  
Afterwards, when Xander’s fallen back to sleep, Methos lies awake again reliving someone else’s memories. Someone else’s loves, fears, joys, and pains.  
  
  
He does it, so that Xander doesn’t have to. So he doesn’t lose the very innocence that Methos prizes in him.   
  
  
But even as he thinks it, he knows that loss is inevitable if Xander has any hope of surviving for any length of time.  
  
  
Getting out of bed carefully, so as not to wake his lover, Methos pads into the livingroom, closing the bedroom door behind him.  
  
  
He hesitates at the kitchen counter, but picks up the phone. MacLeod is on speed dial, and answers a pre-dawn call like a man who hasn’t been sleeping.  
  
  
“I took another head tonight. She was after Xander. This was the fifth one, and . . . if she’d shown up a day later, I’d have been out of town.”  
  
  
Silence on MacLeod’s end.  
  
  
“You were right, alright? I can’t protect him forever.”  
  
  
A soft sigh. “How are you going to tell him?   
  
  
Methos pinches the bridge of his nose, then lets Xander’s quiet quickening calm him.  
  
  
“The same way  _I_  was told.” Beat. “I’m going to have to kill him.”  
  
  
More silence, and he knows that  _MacLeod_  knows what’s coming.  
  
  
“He’ll need a teacher.”  
  
  
“I got out of that game a long time ago, Methos.”  
  
  
“I need you to get back in, Mac. Please. For his sake and for mine.  _Please_  . . . I’m asking you a favor.”  
  
  
“You haven’t got any right.”  
  
  
“I know, I know . . . but I’m asking, all the same.”  
  
  
MacLeod sighs again.  
  
  
“Bring him here and let me get a look at him.”  
  
  
“Thank you, Mac.”  
  
  
“Don’t thank me, yet. I haven’t said yes.”  
  
  
 _As good as,_  Methos thinks, but doesn’t push the matter.  
  
  
It’s sunrise before he gets back into bed with Xander, who doesn’t stir, this time. Merely slumbers on in relative innocence that’s about to end brutally, sometime in the near future.  
  
  
“It’s for your own good,” Methos tells him—tells himself, as well. But as good a liar as he is, he still doesn’t believe it.  
  
  
And yet, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, but Xander, and keeping Xander safe. If that means destroying him to do it. . . .  
  
  
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Methos destroyed what he loved. Though he thinks this time will probably hurt the worst.


	13. Gang Aft Agley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The best-laid schemes of mice and men / Gang aft agley”. For prompt 164 “good idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen." And also post "The Dao of Methos" by approximately eighty years.

  
“I would've thought MacLeod had taught you better than this.”   
  
  
Methos sits at what was once his usual table at  _Joe_ 's, but the other occupant doesn't look up from his beer. His dark hair is pulled back into a ponytail, beard neatly-trimmed. Coupled with an air of imminent readiness, the resemblance to Duncan is eerie.  
  
  
“He did,” Xander says, smiling faintly. “But I know your Quickening better than my own.”  
  
  
“You always have.” Methos can't stop staring, can't be arsed to care that he can't stop. He's too busy wondering how something as brief as one mortal lifetime seems so long to have gone without seeing Xander--and for one who'd lived some hundred mortal lifetimes before Xander was even born.   
  
  
How even Alexa has faded to a sanitized memory that awakens vague tenderness in him, but nothing more. Nothing like the needhungerdespair missing Xander has caused.  
  
  
That will, hopefully, soon be over.  
  
  
“I could be here to take your head,” Methos murmurs.  
  
  
“Could be,” Xander agrees solemnly. “But you're not.”  
  
  
Methos says nothing for a long time, and Xander looks up questioningly, unafraid.  
  
  
“Are you here for my head?”  
  
  
“No.”  
  
  
Xander nods, sits back a little--gives Methos an impersonal once-over. “You look well.”  
  
  
“So do you.” It's true. He's still boyishly handsome and not overly aware of that fact. But he seems perfectly at home in his own skin.   
  
  
Content.  
  
  
“Still going by 'Adam'?” Xander's dark eyes flicker in amusement--odd to see him with two, even now.   
  
  
“Most recently, I was Richard Stuyvesant, junior professor of psychology at the University of Hamburg.”  
  
  
Xander's lips twitch into a full grin, showing even, white teeth. “Can I call you 'Dick'?”  
  
  
“Wouldn't be the first time you did.”  
  
  
“True.” That grin falters, as does the steady gaze. “So, you've been in Germany, all this time.”  
  
  
“Only the past fifteen years. There were other places before that.” Beat. “You've looked for me.”  
  
  
“Through hell, high water and a failed marriage.” Now the grin has fled and the gaze is stony. “Did you think I wouldn't?”  
  
  
He had. “'Time apart' was  _your_  grand idea, Xander--”  
  
  
“Staying gone  _eighty-three years_  was yours, Methos.”  
  
  
To hear his name finally fall from Xander's lips is strangely unpleasant: like a door he'd never thought would close, quietly snicking shut.  
  
  
Xander stands and lays a crisp twenty on the table. Light winks off the gold of a wedding band and, snake-quick, Methos traps his hand. The electric shock of contact makes them gasp, makes their eyes meet in shared knowledge.  
  
  
“So, how's  _this_  marriage working out, Xander?”  
  
  
Any vulnerability is shuttered in one blink. MacLeod has taught him well, indeed. “Gil's a good man, and . . . I stopped looking for you a long time ago.”   
  
  
Xander frees his hand and walks away. Again. But Methos is never one to sweat the small stuff when patience will pay off just as well.  
  
  
'Gil' may be a good man . . . but he's also a mortal one.


	14. The Idea Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For prompt slashthedrabble prompt 164 “good idea” . . . Gil's got lots of 'em.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Set Post-"Chosen", and post-"Horsemen." And also post "Gang Aft Agley" by a day.

“Mr. Sykes? Mr. Wilson's here.”  
  
  
“Send him in, thanks . . .  _Save All. Wallpaper Mode_.” The presentation on Gil's plasma-wall is replaced by photos of the trip to Tasmania. He steps around his desk as Derek breezes in already talking.  
  
  
“I know, it's kinda . . . sudden. Different.” Derek runs a hand over the shaggy new haircut. Smoothes the triple-vintage Hawaiian shirt that wasn't in their closet this morning. “But whaddaya think?”  
  
  
The beard--which Gil'd rather liked--is gone. He looks eighteen instead of thirty, and Gil is speechless.  
  
  
Derek sighs. “You're  _so_  not liking this.”  
  
  
“No--you look . . . amazing.” Gil's always been rather lacking in artifice, but Derek takes every stumbling compliment in the spirit it's given. This time is no exception.  
  
  
They meet halfway across the room for a hug and kiss hello, then:  
  
  
“We had fun, there.” Derek nods at the wallpaper.  
  
  
Gil smiles. “I was thinking . . . we might have fun in Rangoon, this year.”  
  
  
The strong, relaxed body in his arms goes tense, and far from seeming like a Good Idea, Rangoon is suddenly, obviously a  _Bad Idea_.  
  
  
“Right. Let me guess . . . you and Adam went there on holiday once--had a spectacular row that's put you off the place forever?” Gil tries to say it like a joke, hoping this tension has nothing to do with the mysterious ex who's sometimes a silent partner in their marriage.  
  
  
“I've--never been to Rangoon. With anyone.” There's a smile in Derek's voice, but his eyes are fierce, steely. “I've . . . been waiting for the right guy to take me, you could say.”  
  
  
Gil can only gawk. It's rare that, where their relationship is concerned, he has an idea he's certain Adam-bloody-Pierson hadn't had first.   
  
  
Rare that he feels like  _the right guy. . . ._  
  
  
Well.  
  
  
“Right. That's settled, then.” He doesn't try to hide his contentment, knowing full well he'll be grinning all afternoon, anyway. “So what else brings you down here?”  
  
  
Those dark, fierce eyes soften a little, and the hands on Gil's back slide a bit lower. “Nothing much . . . just the thundering need to get bent over a desk by my honey.”  
  
  
Gil's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Here? Now? But I've a meeting--”  
  
  
“You're the CEO.” Derek gives him a look that makes him feel terribly young, though he's older by eight years. Terribly  _slow_ , though he's  _the_  up-and-coming 'Idea Man', according to several internationally-read business magazines. “Meetings start when  _you_  say they start.”  
  
  
“And I said three o'--”  
  
  
“Hush.” Gil's shirt is unceremoniously yanked out of his trousers, and replaced by Derek's calloused hands. Fond, fathomless eyes flash at him. “You need to be ripping my clothes off, like, _now_.”  
  
  
“Love, we don't have any . . . that is, we need--” Gil isn't at all unhappy to be silenced by a teasing kiss.  
  
  
“Don't need anything but you,” Derek murmurs shakily. “Just you.”  
  
  
And Gil has another Good Idea--better than Rangoon, even:   
  
  
Three o'clock meetings can occasionally be pushed back to four . . . thirty.


End file.
